Emergency Planning for People with Hearing Loss

There is a growing awareness that people with hearing loss are not adequately considered in systems of emergency planning. We have long been aware that emergency television captioning is often inadequate, but it now seems that the issue is much more pervasive than that!

February 2006 - Emergency preparedness for people with disabilities is in the news, and rightfully so! Here's a report on Cheryl Heppner's presentation at the 2005 TDI Conference.

December 2005 - In response to the dismal treatment that people with disabilities experienced in our recent emergencies, Senator Tom Harkin is calling for emergency planners to do a better job of including planning for people with disabilities.

December 2005 - What's the best way for authorities to communicate with people with hearing loss in an emergency? It just might be captioned radio!

November 2005 - Interested in getting realtime emergency information directly to your computer? Here's Dana Mulvany with her thoughts on how to do it.

October 2005 - The National Organization on Disability post-Katrina report states that people with hearing loss were the most underserved of the disability community!

September 2005 - National Council on Disability Calls for Federal Disability Recovery Plan in Response to Hurricane Katrina

September 2005 - Here's a report on a planned upgrade to the emergency warning system that includes notification to phones and pagers!

September 2005 - Boston's WGBH has just announced a program to improve emergency information accessibility to people with hearing loss.

June 2005 - Here's a look at how the folks in Washington DC are handling emergency preparedness for people with disabilities.

May 2005 - Here's our report on Randy Collins' wonderful Emergency Planning workshop, as presented at the 2005 Western Symposium on Deafness.

April 2005 - The National Council on Disabilities identifies deficiencies in emergency planning for people with disabilities and recommends solutions.

March 2005 - Lawsuit declares that emergency planning for places of public accommodation must include provisions for the disabled.

February 2005 - One of the best ways to ensure that emergency centers can communicate with people with hearing loss is to support communications using text messaging. Here's an article about text access to emergency services in the UK.

January 2005 - Do places of public accommodation have an obligation to include plans for people with disabilities in their emergency planning?

January 2005 - Oklahoma is giving visual smoke alarms to people with hearing loss. Here's Cheryl Heppner's report.

December 2004 - DHHCAN has released a report which outlines some of the issues with providing emergency communication to people with hearing loss.

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Gaps in Emergency Preparedness for People with Hearing Loss Raise Alarm

April 2013

Along with the devastation Hurricane Sandy wreaked on the East Coast last fall came renewed attention to the issue of how people who are deaf or hard of hearing receive information during a natural disaster or other emergency. On the one hand, Sandy brought front and center the vital role that sign language interpreters can play in disseminating accurate and timely emergency information: When New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg took to the TV airwaves to provide information on the massive storm bearing down on the city, he had an interpreter signing at his side. In fact, one such interpreter quickly turned into a YouTube hit thanks to her pronounced facial expressions and hand and body movements. On the other hand, there were compelling stories of those left out of the loop, such as a deaf woman on hard-hit Staten Island who was unable to hear police when they came through her neighborhood with megaphones to announce evacuation plans. Full Story

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NPR Labs To Test Emergency Alerts For Deaf

March 2013

The Department of Homeland Security and Federal Emergency Management Agency have awarded a contract to NPR LABS for a pilot program of emergency alerts for the deaf or hard-of-hearing in the GULF COAST states. The alerts would be sent using public radio stations in the region via text message, demonstrating the ability to send such alerts to battery-powered radios in emergencies. 25 public radio stations in ALABAMA, FLORIDA, LOUISIANA, MISSISSIPPI and TEXAS will be selected to participate in the pilot, which will use the PUBLIC RADIO SATELLITE SYSTEM to distribute alerts using the Common Alerting Protocol and stations will relay the alerts over RBDS, which will show a flashing indicator on the radios or trigger a bed-shaker. 500 individuals will be included as volunteers to receive the test warnings. Full Story

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NPR Labs Lays Groundwork for Alerts for Deaf

Feb 2013

NPR Labs personnel hope to start a project soon that demonstrates an emergency alerting system for the deaf and hard-of-hearing population in the U.S. using broadcast radio as the transmission medium. . . . The Labs envisions collecting emergency messages and transmitting them over the Public Radio Satellite System to properly equipped public radio stations. From those stations, a firmware device at each station will determine if the message is relevant to the station's coverage area, and then transmit the message to an accessible receiver. The aim is to develop a deaf/HOH-accessible radio receiver with a large text display and bright flashing light to alert the user. "There are several good receivers in the marketplace that alert the consumer," Rarey said. "Those are existing radios with aural warnings, or they're FM/HD Radio receivers that have very small text displays without accessible warning mechanisms. We want to create a receiver that is useful for deaf and hard-of-hearing people, which will also be useful for alerting the general public." Full Story

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FCC to launch disaster alert system for cell phones

May 2011

The Federal Communications Commission is expanding its familiar emergency alert system notifications sent over TV and radio to now include mobile phones. Dubbing the new service PLAN (Personal Localized Alerting Network), the government would target the alerts in the form of text messages sent to cell phones of people who need or want to be notified in the event of an emergency. Developed by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), PLAN would allow customers of any participating wireless carrier to turn their phones into personal alert systems. The service will initially launch in New York City by the end of this year but is expected to roll out nationwide in 2012 through support from AT&T, Verizon, Sprint, and T-Mobile. To receive the alerts, a mobile phone must be outfitted with a certain hardware chip, typically found in higher-end phones like the newer iPhone, according to The New York Times. A software upgrade is also required. Full Story

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Survey on Emergency Communications and People with Disabilities

April 2011

The evolution of wireless telecommunication is fundamentally changing how we communicate in emergencies. We no longer rely only on weather sirens, radio, and televised alerts. Emergency assistance is no longer only as close as the nearest landline phone - we carry it with us in mobile wireless devices. Both the federal government and the wireless industry are exploring this evolution as they develop plans for the next-generation of emergency alerting and 9-1-1 communications systems. Critical to this exploration is consideration of equitable access for Americans with disabilities. Download Full Document

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NOD Katrina Report Identifies People with Hearing Loss as Most Underserved

October 25

On October 5, 2005 Congress reported on findings of the four Special Needs Assessment for Katrina Evacuees (SNAKE) teams sent to Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Houston, Texas after hurricane Katrina. The National Organization on Disability attended the briefing and produced a report that documents the availability of services to people with disabilities in the aftermath of Katrina. It's probably no surprise to those familiar with the hearing loss community that its members were provided the LEAST access.

The NOD report states on pages 8 - 9:

"The most underserved group were those who are deaf or heard of hearing. Less than 30% of shelters had access to American Sign Language interpreters, 80% did not have TTY's, and 60% did not have TVs with open caption capability. Only 56% of shelters had areas where oral announcements were posted so people who are deaf, hard of hearing or out of hearing range could go to a specified area to get or read the content of announcements. This meant that the deaf or hard of hearing had no access to the vital flow of information."

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Coming Soon - Expanded Emergency Alert Capability

September 2005

The recent hurricane emergencies have put the spotlight on all sorts of emergency planning and preparation issues, including how to notify people that an emergency is imminent. Such notification has traditionally been done by television and radio; "Broadcasting & Cable" is reporting that the Feds are designing an expanded system (called IPAWS - Integrated Public Alert Warning System) that can transmit emergency alerts to cell phones, PDAs, and computers.

Officials from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and other government offices plan to have the system backbone in place by fall of 2006, but are unwilling to predict when the system would be fully operational.

The FCC is currently studying whether changes to existing telecommunications rules will be required before the system is implemented. They are also debating the extent to which participation in IPAWS should be mandatory.