There are many ways to observe Independence Day. Dr. Z usually reads the Declaration of Independence in its entirety. In any event, Dr. Z considers the first sentence of the second paragraph most fitting when one talks about independence.

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

This is most fitting today when we have close to full communication access, made by the advent of videophones, which followed TTY’s. When one says equal, this means we deaf and hard of hearing people are close to being equal to our hearing counterparts when it comes to how we communicate. The things standing in the way are interoperability between products. This should be resolved once and for all–once all videophone devices are fully interoperable like cell phones, we can consider ourselves equal and we can then pursue “life, liberty and happiness!”

Happy Independence Day from Dr. Z!!

Dr. Z cares about your communication access.

Disclosure: Dr. Z is a contractor working with CSDVRS on several projects.