TDI
Announces 2003 Awards
for Telecommunications and Media Access
SILVER
SPRING, MD - At the end of the three-day 15th Biennial TDI
International Conference in Las Vegas on July 16, 2003, TDI
announced the distinguished individual and corporate winners
of their biennial awards for telecommunications and media
access for the years 2002 and 2003. The five awards
from TDI honor individuals and companies who have given
extraordinary efforts in different areas promoting equal
access to telecommunications and media for consumers
who are deaf, hard of hearing, late deafened or deaf-blind.
The 2003 award winners are:
I.
Lee Brody Lifetime Achievement Award
Dr. Robert R. Davila
Rochester, NY
Vice President & Chief Executive Officer
National Technical Institute for the Deaf at Rochester
Institute of
Technology
This
year's I. Lee Brody Lifetime Achievement Award honors Dr.
Robert R. Davila, Vice President & Chief Executive
Officer of the National Technical Institute for the Deaf at
Rochester Institute of Technology (NTID/RIT) in Rochester,
New York, for his outstanding vision, leadership, and
contributions in the field of deaf education, and for his
continuing efforts to promote technology research,
innovation and use in the home, in the classroom, and in
pursuit of worldwide community integration during his long
and distinguished career in government, academia and
disability advocacy.
During his tenure, Dr. Davila provided oversight for
enhanced professional development of students at NTID/RIT
through the use of classroom technology. To maintain the
high level of education for his students, he developed
strategic partnerships with corporations to make use of
emerging technologies.
While serving the US Department of Education under the first
Bush
Administration, Davila demonstrated special commitment to
maintaining the level of funding for television captioning.
In addition, he chaired key
government-wide or federal interagency committees, including
the Interagency Committee on Employment of People with
Disabilities, Interagency Committee on Developmental
Disabilities, and the Federal Interagency Coordinating
Council on services for infants and toddlers. He was
also appointed to serve on the Architectural and
Transportation Barriers Compliance Board as well as the
President's Committee on Mental Retardation. In 1989,
Dr. Davila appeared as a Special Representative on behalf of
the United States before the United Nations General Assembly
to mark the conclusion of the United Nations Decade of
Disabled Persons.
Davila also served on Universal Design Committee for Bell
Atlantic before its merger with GTE to become Verizon, and
advised on accessible designs for developing
telecommunication equipment and programs. He also
served on advisory boards with three captioning providers:
The Caption Center at WGBH, VITAC and Media Captioning
Services.
Dr. Davila made several presentations on how technology can
impact on the quality of life of deaf and hard of hearing
persons, not only in the
classroom, but also throughout society. He also
contributed a doctoral
dissertation titled, "Effect of Changes in Visual
Information Patterns on
Student Achievement Using a Captioned Film and Specially
Adapted Still Pictures" at Syracuse University in 1972.
H.
Latham Breunig Humanitarian Award
Pamela Y. Holmes
Madison, WI
Director of Consumer and Regulatory Affairs, Ultratec, Inc.
TDI
presented this year's Breunig award to Ms. Pamela Y. Holmes,
Director of Consumer and Regulatory Affairs at Ultratec,
Inc. in Madison, Wisconsin, in recognition of her
outstanding contributions and consensus-building leadership
in shaping public policy in telecommunications and media
access at the federal, state, and local levels on behalf of
Americans who are deaf and hard of hearing. Ms. Holmes
has worked for Ultratec for the past 16 years and played a
major role in CapTel development - now on trial in thirteen
states. As a former member of the TDI Board of
Directors, she co-chaired the TDI Conference Program twice
(1999 - Seattle; 2001 - Sioux Falls). She founded and
continues to lead the National Association of the Deaf's
Telecommunications Advocacy Network (NAD-TAN); an online
coalition of more than 70 advocates across the country, and
serves on the Wisconsin Universal Service Fund Council.
Ms. Holmes was appointed by President Clinton to the U.S.
Access Board in 1994 and re-appointed to a second term in
1997 and elected Chair of the U.S. Access Board in March
2001. During this time, she played a lead role in the
Access Board's development of accessibility guidelines for
telecommunications equipment (Section 255) and Federal
Electronic and Information Technology (Section 508 of the
Rehabilitation Act as Amended) and chaired the Board's
Technical Programs Committee for three years.
Andrew
Saks Engineering Award
Mr. Thomas McLaughlin
Salt Lake City, UT
President, NXi, Inc.
As
her daughter Andrea looked on, Ms. Jean Saks bestowed this
year's award named after her late husband Andrew, to Mr.
Thomas McLaughlin, President of NXi, Inc. in Salt Lake City,
Utah, in recognition of his outstanding contributions in the
development of Internet-based text telecommunications that
make possible Internet Protocol Relay Services and online
TTY applications.
Mr. McLaughlin was specially noted for his achievements in
fusing 1960's TTY technology with today's Internet platform.
He developed the first computer based TTY product in that
was compatible with high-speed fax modems in 1993. From
there he developed computer based TTY networks for offices
using Internet gateways. As a result, he was able to
develop Internet-based text telecommunication applications
while retaining familiar TTY conventions with NexTalk.net
service and laid the groundwork technology for Internet
Protocol
relay services.
Robert
H. Weitbrecht Telecommunications Access Award
MCI Global Relay
Sprint Relay & Communication Services for the Deaf, Inc.
TDI
recognized three corporations for this year's Robert H.
Weitbrecht
Telecommunications Access Award in recognition of their
pioneering efforts in improving access for consumers who are
deaf and hard of hearing.
One of the awards went to MCI Global Relay, a TRS provider
since 1992 in recognition of its pioneering efforts in the
development and offering of Internet Protocol Relay Services
nationwide in America. Recognizing that popular
computer and Internet technologies are used everywhere; MCI
Global Relay brought together major technological resources
together and developed a familiar application in a whole new
way - IP-Relay. As a result, there is increased
availability of telecommunications for people on the go.
Sprint Relay & Communication Services for the Deaf, Inc.
(CSD), were recognized for their pioneering efforts in
partnership in the development and offering of Video Relay
Services nationwide in America. As Sprint and CSD
recognized that popular broadband technologies have come
within reach of the average consumer, they opened avenues of
remote sign communications using off the shelf technologies
that are available everywhere. By bringing together
major technological resources together to meet our specific
needs, they increased functional equivalency for deaf and
hard of hearing callers and enabled them to converse in the
language of their choice.
James
C. Marsters Promotion Award
Media Access Group at WGBH
National Captioning Institute
VITAC Corporation
The
captioning industry was born in 1971 when the Caption Center
(now Media Access Group at WGBH) was formed. National
Captioning Institute (NCI) was formed in 1979 to caption
programs and produce decoders. From there, the first
closed captioned show broadcast in 1980 and the first
real-time captioned show broadcast in 1982. The
establishment of American Data Captioning (now VITAC
Corporation) in 1986 showed that captioning can become a
viable industry. In the early 1990's the industry
collaborated on the design of a decoder chip, which were
incorporated in all televisions sold in America above
13" diameter as of 1993. In that same year, WGBH
formed the National Center on Accessible Media, (NCAM) to
focus on research and development, shaping the future of
captioning. In the mid 1990's the Internet ushered in
the digital age, showing new possibilities for captioning to
be used in search engines as a way to index media based on
dialogue. Shortly afterwards, captioning began to
appear on multimedia applications and in movie theaters as
other industries and secondary audiences discovered the
benefits of captioning. As digital television began to
emerge, the industry developed EIA 708-B, controlling
captioning standards for the next generation of television
broadcasting. Today as the industry matures, the
industry leaders join together with other vendors in a
coalition to address issues affecting captioning and other
accessible media.
For their outstanding efforts, to promote closed captioning,
thus empowering all Americans by providing access to
information and entertainment, TDI recognizes the three
leaders in the captioning industry who have made major
strides with this year's James C. Marsters Promotion Award.
They have raised public awareness by consumers and industry
through the promotion of captioning and video description
and the development of technical captioning standards for
analog and digital television broadcasting. Through
research, the industry was able to promotion captioning as a
tool for literacy and for
people learning English as a Second Language (ESL), thus
broadening
educational applications for children who are deaf, hard of
hearing or have certain learning disabilities. With
full involvement of consumers on their advisory boards,
there continues to be ongoing research and development for
media access beyond television.
"These individuals and corporations give us a model of
collaboration that can happen when industry and consumers
combine their resources", says Claude Stout, Executive
Director of TDI.
