Consumer Member of EAAC Fires Back at Industry Dissenters
The FCC’s Emergency Access Advisory Committee met Friday for the first time since issuing a contested report last year on the future of emergency communications for people with disabilities. Industry representatives on the EAAC filed an addendum to the report questioning many of the findings (CD Dec 27 p4). Members of the EAAC representing the disabled said in an FCC filing they found it “very contradictory” that industry members “organized and jointly questioned nearly all the key recommendations.”
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Cheryl King, overseeing the group for the FCC, asked committee members if they had anything more to say about the 2011 report. No one spoke up. King lauded the group and announced that members would each receive an FCC certificate noting their participation.
But then near the end of the meeting, Sheri Farinha, representing the Norcal Center for Deaf and Hard of Hearing on the EAAC, went on the attack, slamming industry participants for distancing themselves from last year’s report.
"We all work so hard throughout the year and several of us spend a lot of time and money to go to these meetings,” Farinha said: “I am very, very disappointed with the industry coming out in the end to counter what we all had been working on together. It feels like it needs to be said. We need to get ready for this next year and I want to see the integrity maintained in terms of the members of the EAAC.” Farinha said she hopes the EAAC won’t see a similar divide as it continues its work. “I don’t want to end up in 2012 having this kind of opposition presented from the industry,” she said. “I think there are some industry members who cannot put up with or tolerate our type of consensus or agreement and they should not be at the table if that’s the case.”
No one from industry responded. Only Paul Michaelis, representing Avaya Labs, spoke up after Farinha finished. “Not all industry representatives on the EAAC signed off on the industry statement,” he said. “Avaya did not.”
Most of the discussion at Friday’s meeting centered on when and how often the EAAC would meet in 2012 and what issues would be discussed.
The FCC plans a workshop in April on an interim solution for texting to 911, King said. “We certainly would like to have a portion of it dedicated to the EAAC,” she said. Patrick Donovan of the FCC Public Safety Bureau noted that reply comments were due at the FCC Thursday on next generation 911 rules (see related story this issue). “We'll be reviewing them and scheduling more meetings,” Donovan said. “It is very much a priority of the bureau.”