Dr. Z had been traveling across the country for the most part in November and December–at the same time he has kept an eye on developments over at the FCC.

There have been 2 key personnel developments at the FCC–the first is the appointment of Greg Hlibok as Chief of the Disability Rights Office–he is the first person with a disability to head this very important office. Dr. Z wishes Greg well in his new position, The second is the hiring of Rosaline Crawford (formerly of the NAD) as attorney advisor in the Disability Rights Office. Again, Dr. Z wishes Rosaline well in her new position. With both appointments, the deaf and hard of hearing community will have people at the FCC who genuinely understands their needs.

There are two important VRS proceedings underway at the FCC, one making more headway than the other. The first is the 800/866 number issue that the FCC is reviewing. The rulemaking process is almost complete and the comment period has closed. The FCC should issue new rules on how 800/866 numbers will be handled for VRS consumers. The second is the Notice of Inquiry for the VRS industry as a whole. The FCC is expected to issue a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking sometime soon after hearing all the comments and feedback from the VRS industry and consumers.

Interestingly, here is how the VRS industry and the deaf and hard of hearing community interacted with the FCC during the month of December(in alphabetical order as of today’s listing on the FCC website):

CSDVRS:  
Exparte (1 filing)
Comments (1 filing)

Purple:
Exparte (1)

Snap:
Exparte (1)

Sorenson:
Exparte (4)
Comments (1)
Reply to Comments (1)

TDI (on behalf of consumer organizations):
Exparte (2)
Comments (2)
Reply to Comments (1)

To read the above filings, you can click on both links: (03-123) (10-51)

The filings do reveal some information as to where the VRS companies and organizations representing consumers stand. You can see the other items that were filed in October and November with the links above by the above companies and other companies in the VRS industry..

Dr. Z cares about your communication access.
Disclosure: Dr. Z is a contractor working with CSDVRS on several projects.