Hi, I'm Beth Haller

I'm a professor of Mass Communication
at Towsen University in Maryland

I also teach Disability Studies there
and at several other campuses

I teach at City University of New York
and their Disability Studies programme

I teach at York University in Toronto
and their Disability Studies programme

I teach at University of Texas, Arlington
and their Disability Studies minor

So I've been doing research since
the early 90's

About media representations of people
with disabilities

So I have a kind of unique
relationship to the ADA

Because I did my dissertation on
how the news media covered it

So before I went to Temple University
in Philadelphia to get my PhD

I was at University of Maryland College
Park getting my Masters

I started that in 1989

And there's a reason for all these numbers
(laughs) these dates

And in 1988 is when the Deaf President
Now movement happened

That gathered at university in DC, and I
think somewhere in the back of my mind

I knew about what was happening because I
was a journalist before I became academic

So when I started at College Park in 1989
I ended up doing an article for a class

About a deaf student at Gallaudet and I
got very interested in the deaf community

There's a huge deaf community
in the DC area

Doing my Masters thesis on how the
deaf community was represented

Before, during and after 
Deaf President Now

In the New York Times and the
Washington Post

That was a jumping-off point

When I left College Park it was 1991
and so the ADA had just been passed

And when I got to Temple to start 
working on my PhD

I knew that I wanted to still work in
the area of disability

And we just had this major disability
rights law passed

I remember it more as a focus
of my research

Cause I don't necessarily remember seeing
the actual coverage on the day it happened

In 1990, but I do remember looking at all
the coverage cause that was the subject

Of my dissertation

So it was really interesting to look
at it as an academic

And to kind of watch it happen and
then not happen (laughs)

As it moved into the future

So my dissertation looked at how the
mainstream news media

You know, all the big news magazines
and the major newspapers back then

So I finished my dissertation in '94
Graduated in '95

So it was very early days of the ADA so it
wasn't really being implemented yet

Because they gave several years for
people to get into compliance

But as the years have passed it's been
very interesting to watch how things

Weren't happening

And I think what we all thought was
going to happen was:

Congress was going to pass this major
disability rights law

And people would then follow it
because it's now federal law

Not to discriminate based on disability

But that isn't what happened (laughs)

And from a media standpoint, that really
kind of hurt ADA because-

And I've even had this conversation with
disability rights scholars and

Disability rights activists-
because they I think thought

In that same way that it's now law
and everything will be fine

And there was such a history of being
covered in the media so badly

That the activists thought they could get
this past and everything would be fine

And they didn't need the
media for anything

So I come onto the scene, I start going
to Society for Disability studies,

Meetings in the early 90's,
started presenting my research

And even the disability community in those
first early years right after the ADA

Didn't understand why the
media was important

Because I remember presenting
at a conference

At a Disability Studies conference
And people coming up to me and saying

"That's really nice that you do work on
media, but we have bigger things we

Need to be dealing with: getting people
jobs, getting people proper education

Getting people out of nursing homes."
My response to everybody was

"How do you think you're going to do that
if you're not getting out information

Into public opinion, so if you're not
able to change public opinion

How can you get these
things accomplished?

And how do you get public opinion
changed? You get a proper narrative

Going in the media." And now there's
actual disability studies, research

And disability activists who've talked
about this in the early 2000's

About how they took the wrong tactic
after the ADA was passed