Universal Service?

Telecommunications Policy In Australia and People with Disabilities

By Michael J Bourk

Edited by Tom Worthington.


Telecom and Disability Policy Prior to TACC

Inside Telecom

The first section of this chapter argues that scientific discourses have influenced Telecom policy in terms of: a) socially constructing people with disability; and b) setting conditions by which the their telecommunication needs are met. As a result, it is argued that opportunities for addressing issues of equity may have been missed. However, valuable empirical data was gathered about various groups of people with disabilities and some of their requirements were identified.

The section also examines the changing social and commercial environmental environments for their effect on telecommunication policy. It is argued that the growing pressure on Telecom to be profitable and cost-efficient, and the International Year of Disabled Persons were two environmental factors that had mixed influences on policy. In 1981, the United Nations International Year of the Disabled (IYDP), Telecom released a number of products designed to facilitate telecommunications for people with disabilities. The research indicates that it was a period of enthusiasm and activity that appeared to offer new opportunities to people with impairments. Unfortunately it appears that the benefits did not last as disability programmes were cut and key personnel working in the disability unit were made redundant. It is argued the the reasons for the apparent reversal of policy are: a) the dominance of charity discourses that framed disability policy within Telecom; and b) increasing pressure on the telecommunications monopoly to adapt to a competitive environment.

Finally, the section examines the complexities of the debate surrounding teletypewriters and people with severe hearing impairments. Arguably, the opposing arguments illustrate the impact that the interplay of discourse and environmental variables had on policy.

Little was written on telecommunication policy toward people with disabilities prior to 1988 and few appear to know of significant issues and events (See Newell, 1988). It also appears that telecommunications policy by Telecom for people with disabilities was spasmodic. Long intervals of inactivity were occasionally interrupted with short bursts of enthusiasm demonstrated by progressive and innovative programmes. However, new programmes appeared to retrace the steps of previously discarded initiatives for people with disabilities. Consider the following headline and claim made in 1995 taken from an excerpt from Link [3] by the disability services manager:

New Disability Service from Telecom ... The hotline ... staffed by dedicated regionally -based teams will provide specialist information about products and services for people with a disability. Liz Atkinson, Telecom's Manager, Disability Services said, it was the first time that Telecom has had a dedicated disabilities team. Previously, enquiries were handled by Telecom's general customer enquiry staff (Link, 1995, 4/2, 44).

Now compare the above with the following headline and statements taken from an excerpt from Breakthrough, seven years earlier:

New Service from Telecom: Telecom has established a National Disability Programs Branch to make products and services more accessible for people with disabilities... .The Branch is being managed from Telecom's metropolitan Division in Melbourne and will have staff in each State. At the State level, functions will include consultancy and advisory services for individuals with disabilities... (Breakthrough, 1988, 52, 6).

It appears that a similar disability service program reappeared twice within a seven years period. A focus on decentralised access to relevant information related to specialist products is common to both as is the emphasis placed on the establishment of a new dedicated disabilities team. It is not only a little surprising that seven years prior to the 1988 announcement, Telecom recorded in its Annual General Report that the Commission had recently set up, ``Telecom Advisory Centres for Disabled Persons in each State'' (1980/81, 63).

The reasons for the apparent reconstruction and reinstitution of Telecom's (and later Telstra) disability policy are complex and, it is argued, involve the interrelationships between dominant discourses and environments. Environmental variables such as: a) expanding markets; b) the emphasis on increasing cost-efficiencies; and c) issues management in the public arena, interacted with competing scientific and rights discourses of disability to influence policy.

In 1975, Telecom released a report, Telecom 2000, that attempted to map future technological innovations to business and community telecommunication requirements within changing socio-cultural environments (Moyal, 1984, 305). Telecom 2000 was an ambitious undertaking. The document reveals a serious multi-disciplinary approach by Telecom management to understand and meet the challenges of rapidly changing telecommunications and social environments. Telecom 2000 also reflects Telecom's enthusiastic optimism to meet those challenges and a willingness to explore the expansion of its responsibility in terms of access and equity:

An increasing demand for a range of telecommunication services in the fields of health and welfare is likely. This can be expected in view of what seems a general desire that equality and convenience of access to the benefits available are not denied communities disadvantaged by physical, economic or ethnic constraints. Healthcare, for example, might be complemented by the provision of community paramedical clinics connected to a range of specialist centres by telecommunications links (Telecom, 2000, 1975, 111)

The context allows for physical to signify either geographic or impairment boundaries. Similarly the access and equity principle applies to both. However in terms of funding sources for access and equity in the expanding network of services, the report places the emphasis on Government subsidies:

Factors consistent with a greater (telephone) penetration [4] are rising personal incomes and an increasing social dependence on the telephone, possibly recognised by future Government subsidy of the basic telephone service as an essential reticulated utility (Telecom 2000, 1975, 111).

Telecom's reluctance to assume financial responsibility for providing the basic telephone service indicates an attitude of resistance to paying for non-profitable activities and, more importantly, a belief that they should be funded by government. Though this provision of the standard telephone service is explicitly part of their charter as defined in the 1975 Act [5], the statement reveals a systemic attitude that would be challenged later (See Chapter ten). However, Telecom 2000 did indicate a pro-active approach by Telecom toward projecting the future telecommunication requirements of Australians and how it might meet those needs. The report also had a dramatic role in challenging the engineering planning dominance within Telecom as Reinecke and Schultz observe:

Telecom 2000 was an examination of the role of telecommunications in the society of the future... Inside Telecom there was a growing awareness that the telecommunications systems chosen for the future would have a large impact on the society the country would have. Although Telecom 2000 was a long-term outlook, not a detailed series of objectives, it turned an exclusive engineering planning model on its head. It drew on a number of disciplines and advocated an open planning and community involvement in decisions about its future (1983, 25).

Moyal also observes that the report had an impact on senior Telecom management by influencing them to take a broader and more flexible approach to telecommunications planning (1984, 305). The report was also mentioned in interviews with ex-Telecom officers who believed it generated greater social awareness in planning issues at senior management levels evidenced by a willingness to explore non-traditional markets such as people with disabilities (pers. comms. MDSUT; TMPP; 1997).

Before Telecom began employing marketing experts from outside the organisation, senior management promoted employees, many of them engineers, who showed flair in that direction. In 1977 Telecom's Manager of Product Planning's role shifted from one of engineer to product planner and was given the mandate by senior management to explore new markets rather than new product ideas for existing markets. In approaching the challenge he focussed on market segments that at the time were disadvantaged in the existing telecommunication s system. He drew up four groups disadvantaged in the following ways:

These categories were not true market segments in the strict sense of the term (McCarthy et al, 1997, 116 - 118 ). The categories were not discrete and overlapped with others. Consequently, the groupings were problematic in marketing terms. However, these categories allowed people with disabilities to be identified as a potential market.

In 1978, Telecom established a ``functional area responsible for the development of facilities for handicapped and disadvantaged users''(Telecom Australia, 1981, 2). Telecom's Manager of Product Planning, a customer service officer in the NSW branch and a person who identifies as having a disability, transferred to Melbourne and began to manage the unit in the Melbourne Headquarters.

Telecom's Manager of Product Planning soon discovered a lack of data available about people with disabilities and commissioned a report into the issue (pers.comm TMPP, 1997). Two senior market research consultants within Telecom, Chas Keating and Barry Wilson, were commissioned to undertake the project and published their findings in 1981.Disabled People and telecommunications (1981) was the first study undertaken by Telecom of telecommunication issues and the requirements of people with a disability. According to Telecom's Manager of Product Planning, the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) requested and later used the published findings to inform their own research (pers.comm. TMPP, 1997). The request from the ABS indicates the paucity of available data about people with disabilities as well as Telecom's progressive approach in researching the communities.

The study used a qualitative rather than quantitative methodology. Quantitative methods were generally avoided due to the limited resources of the study and the prohibitive costs involved in using mail-out surveys on a large-scale. In addition they were inappropriate for a number of people with disabilities who were unable to use conventional survey methods. (Telecom Australia, 1981, 2). The research involved focus groups and individual interviews with health workers, administrators, educators and people with various disabilities. Approximately 800 people participated in the study and interviews were undertaken in 1978 and 1979.

While praised for providing some valuable insights and data, the report has been criticised for framing people with disability in a medical discourse (Newell, 1988). Newell observed that the study usefully identified physical and financial barriers to telecommunications faced by some people with disabilities. In addition he comments that it provided pertinent suggestions for improving the ``status-quo with various aids'' (Newell, 1988, 12). However, he also argued that the study was framed by a medical discourse. The report categorised disability into one of fourteen clinical conditions such as ageing, brain damage or hearing impairment. The requirements of people falling outside the listed categories or having multiple conditions were not considered (Newell, 1988, 12).

Wilson & Keating's report emphasised individual disabling conditions instead of focussing on a socially restrictive telecommunications environment that exacerbated the problems of disability. Consequently, according to Newell, larger issues of access and equity under the standard telecommunication service guarantee [6] were ignored. Given the market imperative of the report and the professional background of the researchers this is understandable. However, it does indicate the presence of a blind spot in Telecom's approach to disability issues that would emerge as a contentious issue between the carrier and community groups later. Therefore a medical discourse influenced the telecommunications policy environment and disability research agenda.

The Wilson and Keating report concluded that few products needed to be added to Telecom's product range to meet the needs of most people with disabilities. When they categorised disability into fourteen categories, they began with the premise that each person with a disability would require specialised equipment. However, they found from the research that most people in diverse groups would enjoy the use of a standard telephone service with the addition of just a few aids. For example people who are quadraplegics share similar motor difficulties as others with polio. Similarly, people with dwarfism and others in wheelchairs are likewised disadvantaged in reaching public payphone handsets (Wilson and Keating, 1981, 39). However, they also observed that care must be taken not to underestimate the effect that different impairments may have on accessing a telecommunications service in similar environments. For example a person with dwarfism may easily access a payphone space in contrast to a person in a wheelchair who may not (39).

Wilson and Keating (1981, 39) also segregate people with various disabilities into several broad categories:

They also classified disability in terms of the physiological level of disability by using the following categories:profound, severe, moderate and mild. It may be argued that broad descriptive categories may be useful to identify specific requirements for some equipment design. However, categories may also create boundaries of exclusion. For example telecommunications assistance for severe physiological impairments are likely to be the most expensive and may have lower policy priorities. Consequently, policies framed by clinical categories of disability alone, may not address the social issues of equitable access to telecommunications services.

Wilson and Keating make significant references to the feasibility of teletypewriters for people with hearing impairments. The complexities of social advocate, scientific and political discourses are illustrated in the debates surrounding teletypewriters; and they can begin to be identified with the research conclusions of Wilson and Keating.

Although the researchers estimated 17, 600 of 300, 000 hearing impaired Australians have profound hearing loss, a teletypewriter for these people was not deemed to be a satisfactory solution to their telecommunication requirements (Wilson and Keating, 1981, 40):

Some 18,000 deaf mutes are not only disabled by lack of speech, but of hearing as well. Therefore advanced concepts such as speech synthesisers should be able not only to translate symbols into sound, but sound into symbols.This category of disability, with its associated hearing problem, appears to be the major problem area in the design of equipment for disadvantaged telephone users. All other disabilities are able to be aided by current technology and equipment - aids such as the telephone typewriter are expensive and are only a limited aid to this group ... More futuristic technologies such as speech synthesisers or video-phones may offer more comprehensive solutions

Medical discourses are embedded in the text as identified in previous extracts from the report. Furthermore, a charity discourse is also implied by the reference to the expense of TTY technology as a possible reason to explain its limited value to people who are profoundly deaf. It could be argued that the researchers assumed that the consumer would have to pay for the TTY was normative in their reasoning. The statements may be extrapolated to explain Telecom's policy[7] toward people with disabilities.

Four key conditional features of policy are evident; (a) access to a telecommunication service is contingent on existing equipment or inexpensive modifications; (b) the cost of such equipment; (c) that equipment is valued in terms of its applicability to the existing network ; and (d) problematic issues of access can be resolved by future technological innovation . In reference to the last observation (d), access to such technology would only be feasible when the conditions (b) and (c) could be met. In other words, there would need to be sufficient take-up of the technology (eg. videophone) in the major markets to enable cost-efficiencies to trickle down to allow concessions for people with disabilities. Otherwise, expense would not be a barrier to teletypewriter provision for people who are deaf.

Further explanation as to why the teletypewriter was perceived by the researchers to be, only a limited aid to people who are profoundly deaf is given in the full report. According to an earlier study by Wilson:

The study on the telephone typewriter [teletypewriter] indicated that the most frequent contacts made by the profoundly deaf were with people with unimpaired hearing. Taking this and the other preferred means of communication into consideration, it would appear that for the profoundly deaf with poor speech, the ``telephone typewriter'' has limited use for this group. Concepts such as voice-synthesisers which can translate symbols to sound and vice-versa, and or videophones, seem to offer the greatest potential in enabling the profoundly deaf to use the telephone network (Telecom Austalia, 1981, 43).

Naurally with the limited number of available TTYs at the time, most communication by people who were deaf was limited to people with unimpaired hearing. In addition, Wilson and Keating recorded their observations at a time before a networked relay (NRS) services were introduced into Australia. An NRS (the acronym later referred to National Relay Service) enables TTY users to communicate with non-deaf people via interpreters.

It is interesting that the researchers projected hopes toward future videophones instead of exploring the options of improving the TTY technology. Arguably, projecting hopes into the future for technological solutions may enable policy makers to abdicate current social responsibilites. The manager of a dedicated disability services unit in Telecom believes that cost considerations by senior management were the reasons for the position (pers. comm. MDSUT).

Apart from its limitations, the Wilson and Keasting (Telecom Australia, 1981) study did represent a major investigation and comprehensive survey of various groups of people with disability and their potential use of modified telecommunication technologies.

The timing of the release of the document in 1981 is significant as the International Year of Disabled People (IYDP) was celebrated that year. The Managing Director of Telecom referred to the IYDP in his foreword to the report:

The report seeks to identify and quantify the range of disabling conditions within the community and to provide directions for the development of new products and services designed to remove barriers to communications. It is hoped as we enter 1981 - the International Year of Disabled Persons - the detailed information contained in this report will be of considerable interest to disabled people and their organisations, to Government agencies, and to telecommunications suppliers (Telecom Australia, 1981, 1).

Senior management positioned the report in the context of the IYDP which indicates that the study operated within a larger political and social context. Telecom described the report as a contribution to the International Year of Disabled Persons (Telecom Australia, Wilson & Keating, 1981). However according to the manager of a dedicated disability services unit in Telecom the IYDP was a useful coincidence and not the catalyst for the research project (pers. comm.MDSUT, 1997).

The stated goals of the Wilson and Keating study suggest that it was framed by two different aspects of a scientific discourse - engineering and marketing. Marketing is also defined as a scientific discourse because people are treated as independent social variables (eg. market segments) that may be isolated from their social contexts and measured for their significance to policy. In addition marketers are trained within narrowly defined disciplines that culminate a stock of knowledge which adds to the legitimacy of the discipline and its exponents as described in Table 3.1 (Chapter three) (See also Throgmorton, 1996). The language used by Curtis in the above extract is significant in that the research was expected to lead to scientific discoveries of new products, new methods for service delivery based on a more precise measurement of disability. The marketing framework of the study is indicated further in the preface:

The study aimed to provide information for use in the provision and marketing of telecommunications equipment for the disabled... (Telecom Australia, 1981).

As observed earlier, given that the two authors were senior project consultants in Telecom's Marketing Planning Branch, the commercial rhetoric is not surprising (Telecom Australia, 1981; Wilson & Keating, 1981, 36). It is argued that the influence of various scientific discourses in Telecom at this time may have obfuscated larger social issues of access and equity for people with disability. This is because both technologists and marketers are trained in narrow fields of expertise which emphasise the independent nature of social variables instead of their holistic nature (Throgmorton, 1996).

A summarised version of the report appeared in the Telecommunications Journal of Australia (TJA)(Wilson and Keating, 1981, 36-43) and reflected a shift in emphasis from discussion previously restricted to engineering issues to also include less technical content. Changes in the journal reflect a larger cultural change moving through Telecom as the corporation came to terms with its new independence as a statutory authority and marketing orientation. A document circulated to Telecom staff in 1978 by the Telecommunication Society of Australia, previously a technical society of current and past Telecom employees, indicated the cultural shift as well as its changing role:

In line with the view that the society is an important element in staff development programmes of Telecom Australia, the NSW committee believes that it should develop as a learned society benefiting all Telecom staff both technical and non-technical (Telecom Society Newsletter, 19 September, 1978).

The above extract is taken from a letter by R. Langwood, the then-Chair of the NSW Division Committee. The title, The Telecommunication Society of Australia and its Role in Telecom Australia, also may indicate the struggle of engineering structured entities to reconstruct themselves within the new commercially oriented environment. The article, Disabled People and Telecommunications, was one of the first articles appearing in the TJA that discussed wider social issues outside of a narrow technical context. Issues surrounding disability appear to serve as bridges between competing discourses [8]. For this reason, the indirect effect of disability policy on the external political, social and technical environments can sometimes be greater than it would at first appear. It would be dangerous to infer that the 1978 study was used strategically by Telecom for inter-departmental solidarity. However, it is not unreasonable to assume that the study facilitated a degree of organisational cultural harmony within the changing Telecom environment. The manager of a dedicated disability services unit in Telecom supports this observation by referring to a strong enthusiasm among design engineers and product planners to find solutions to problems of accessing telephones by some groups of people with disabilities (pers. comms. MDSUT, 1997).

Others provide useful insights of Telecom's changing internal environment and emphasise a conflict between cultures rather than a synthesis (pers. comms. PNFBCA; PDPIA, 1997 ). The President of DPI(A), a person, who identifies as having a disability, worked within Telecom for thirteen years as a computer technician until he left the organisation in 1987 to head a consumer organisation. He describes an organisation that went through an identity crisis as engineering and marketing cultures clashed:

It was an organisation that was driven for many years by an engineering imperative and there was a big war going on within Telecom between engineering and customer service cultures. It had basically been an engineering fiefdom and then market forces issues and customer service issues came in. The organisation struggled to come to terms with a lot of those cultural changes. You could see that internal tension between the engineering and customer service cultures. One camp wouldn't speak to another... a whole new(marketing) language was introduced that was regarded as very foreign... also I suspect a degree of inappropriate dismissal of a lot of the technical requirements the engineering type people were rightly pushing forward but because of their antediluvian attitudes they tended to get dismissed because they looked like 1950s people and a lot of them were... and there were a whole lot of nouveau-riche yuppies talking about a whole lot of new things and basically they were miles apart. And each dismissed the other on the basis of those particular images (pers. comms. PDPIA, 1997).

These observations of clashing generations, dress and language codes imply a clash of worldviews as well as cultural symbols. Telecom's Manager of Product Planning also acknowledged that as the corporation moved to a marketing culture the engineering-marketers, like himself came under increasing pressure to target attractive markets only in their product planning (pers. comms. TMPP, 1997). Targeting attractive markets left little time to focus on designing telecommunication aids for people with disabilities.

The manager of a dedicated disability services unit in Telecom was also sent to Europe and North America to gain international perspectives of telecommunications and services for people with disabilities. They were surprised to learn that in 1978 few countries had addressed the issue in any real depth:

It was a pioneering effort by Telecom but I was surprised to learn that very little was being done in other countries. The problem was how to get the technology into a useful form (for people with disabilities ). Also technical aids were short runs for boutique markets which created a conflict of interest with large cost-outlays. The closest example to Australia's experience was Canada in terms of both being large countries but no-one had a Department of Social Security parallel although the UK and Sweden provided some assistance through their national health systems (pers. comms. MDSUT, 1997).

These observations indicate that on the international level many state-owned and private telecommunication enterprises were yet to fully perceive people with disabilities either as potential markets or as people with a right to a standard telephone service.

As a product planner for people with disabilities, this manager was responsible for arranging the design, supply and distribution of new products to assist people to use telecommunication services. The process was normally given a five year time-frame from design to distribution. As part of its charter, Telecom was required to engage Australian manufacturers to produce the products. They illustrate the process by referring to one example called a dialling ring:

Basically it was a small plastic ring with raised numbers to assist visually impaired people using a standard telephone. The ring fitted over the existing dialler . It looked liked nothing, but involved an entire marketing exercise from design to production and distribution... a tremendous amount of time, sweat and effort went into it and we had to find an Australian manufacturer. In the end it cost more to administer charges and payments for it ... so we just gave it away. (pers. comms. MDSUT, 1997).

Though the resulting product would not have a major impact with most people with a disability, the exercise was far from tokenistic. It reflected an integrated effort by Telecom to begin to meet the telecommunication requirements of people with disabilities. At this time the manager of a dedicated disability services unit in Telecom began to use the Australian Council for the Rehabilitation of the Disabled (now known soley by the acronym ACROD) as a base of distribution and report customer evaluation of products. Previously products had been marketed on an ad-hoc basis (pers. comms. MDSUT, 1997).

The International Year of Disabled Persons (IYDP) saw Telcom develop a program of in significant activities as recorded in their Annual General Report (1980-81):

There are 24 projects on the program. The following are examples-
... During IYDP Telecom is showing its staff a number of films which it is hoped will give them a better awareness of the facts about various disabilities and an understanding of what disabled people can rather than cannot do (AR, 1980-81, 63).

The last comment carries the theme of emphasising ability rather than disability and suggests a move away from the medical and charity discourses which stress dependency. However the language remains rhetoric unless linked to structural changes in policy. It is argued that Telecom traditionally displayed a systemic unwillingness to institute policy that emphasised the right of a person with a disability to a standard telecommunication service. Policy changes were arguably enforced as a result from the Scott v Telstra decision. Arguably, people with disabilities have also been traditionally socially constructed as welfare recipients of concessions which have been granted by governments or Telecom (See pers. comms. CTNPA, 1997; pers. comms., PDPIA; Newell, 1998).

The excerpt taken from the Annual Report (1980-81) also makes reference to an Access Dialler. The Access Dialler has two panels. The first has a large numeric video display and two dials used to alternate between incoming and outgoing calls. The second panel has a special touch pad used to select numbers. Also called the digital display dialler (DDD), the development of the product was promoted in special interest publications in 1981 (Breakthrough, No.7, 1981). The device would assist people with muscular dystrophy, cerebral palsy and those with quadraplegia. The DDD was an example of the multi-functional machine that Keating & Wilson (1981) alluded to in their claim that relatively few aids are required to be designed to meet the telecommunication needs of most people with disabilities (Telecom Australia, 1981, 8). An estimated four thousand Australians potentially may have benefited from the DDD which retailed at approximately $400 at the time (Breakthrough, 7, 1981).

However, with the advent and standard use of the AT200 push-button telephone as a replacement to the older dial -phone, the DDD became mostly redundant. The short-lived relevance of the DDD illustrates the problems of designing products for boutique markets with technology that is superceded before costs can be recovered. Within a rapidly changing technological environment it can be argued from a scientific worldview that it is unfair to expect corporations to supply specialised equipment for small markets which offer little hope for recuperating costs - let alone make a profit. Consequently, it is argued that scientific worldviews and dynamic technological environments had a mutually constitutive effect on policy decisions.

It is argued that the Telecom's dynamic economic environment also had an effect on disability policies. In 1982, bowing to increasing pressure by senior management to reorganise activities around profitable markets and discard loss-making practices, the disability program was axed. (pers. comms. MDSUT, 1997). In the larger political context, Telecom management faced growing antagonism from the Liberal Government and corporate Australia (Reinecke & Schultz, 1983, 199-226; Moyal, 1984, 370-384; Barr, 1985, 33). In 1981, Ian Sinclair became the Minister of Communications.

Within days of taking office, Sinclair dropped Telecom's borrowing levels by approximately $20 million. In addition, in January 1982, Treasury decided to increase the rate of interest it charged on oustanding values of old capital advances negotiated with the Government prior to 1975. The interest adjustment resulted in adding a further $60 million to Telecom's expenditure (Moyal, 1984, 372). Consequently, fiscal pressures placed on Telecom by the Government resulted in the corporation rationalising its internal expenditure and non-profitable activities such as the disability services unit were discarded.

Telecom's managing director in 1981, expressed his frustration with the Government and also provided a senior management perspective of universal service:

Telecom's success and its concept of meeting new business objectives..has been an offense to Government. They feel it deeply in their souls... Just as technology was making it possible to succeed in the notion of a universal service... the Government has taken decisions that make it impossible (Curtis in Moyal, 1984, 374).

Curtis' comments, apart from revealing an intense frustration with the Government indicated a conflict between the worldview of a technocrat and that of a Government inspired by economic rationalism. Both positions are in conflict with the views of social advocates who call for a wider definition of universal service based on the individual right for equitable access to telecommunication services (See Wilson & Goggin, 1993). It appears that Curtis believed that the potential for universal service was offered by technological solutions. His comments imply that more investment in technical infrastructure would somehow enhance the prospect of a universal telecommunication service. Arguably however, the social context in which a universal service can evolve is to a large extent ignored. Despite the reduced power that engineers formally held, the Victorian secretary of the Australian Telecommunications Employees' Association (ATEA) was critical of the low priority social issues occupied in Telecom management considerations:

Even in Jack Curtis' days, engineering was the most powerful section ... the gear came first, second and third, and it was a nuisance that people had to get in the way to look after it; this was a pretty general attitude. The requirements of the network were always seen by engineering as taking priority over human beings, and this made it very difficult to negotiate with them (Fothergill in Moyal, 1983, 25).

Admittedly, Fothergill's comments were in the context of industrial relations, but arguably they deserve at least a limited wider social application. Technocratic priorities in social policies are evident in formal policy. As Wilson & Goggin (1993) observe:

... Australia's concept of universal service has explicitly included consideration of the technological standard of the basic telecommunications service, and the provision of a geographical universal service. In addition the Australian concept of universal service has implicitly left the way open for a comprehensive policy of non-discrimination and a commitment to equity insofar as services were required to be ``reasonably'' accessible to all people (1993, 7).

The reference to the social extension options implied in existing universal service legislation is important as it serves to illustrate an important point in terms of the influence of worldviews on policy. Worldviews are not inflexible determinants on policy makers but they do exert degrees of influences on decision making depending on other contingent factors. Changing environmental conditions (eg. political and social) including hierarchical pressure, fiscal policy and interaction with opposing worldviews are factors which can influence and change either worldviews or policy. In other words worldviews are dynamic variables that mutually interact within dynamic temporal and spatial environments (Throgmorton, 1996).

The mutual interaction of worldviews and environments influence policy outcomes. Furthermore, policy outcomes have a reciprocal dynamic effect on their environments. (See Throgmorton, 1996; Ham & Hill, 1983; Anderson, 1984, 118). The complexity of interactions described above illustrates the reluctanc e of social scientists to isolate any single variable as the determining factor on policy outcomes . The most that can be assumed from policy deconstruction is an approximation of degrees of influence that a dependent variable may have in relation to others. In this way, a manager with a strong engineering background can be said to have been influenced to some degree by their training. A training in a discipline that places a stronger emphasis on technical problem-solving than social consultative processes may explain a low priority given to social access and equity in policy outcomes. The influence of worldviews on policy-makers is implied in the discourses in which they engage to present what they perceive as good policy.

This section has analysed the first seven years of Telecom's policies of providing telecommunications services for people with disabilities. Increased pressure by Governments placed on Telecom to maximise profits and minimise costs repositioned the corporation from an engineering to a marketing orientation. However, during this time, a hybrid engineering - marketing culture emerged as many engineers reskilled with business management and marketing training. Within the hybrid engineering - marketing culture, people with disabilities were briefly constructed as a boutique market by some managers. However, it is argued that medical and charity discourses informed significant research initiatives and may have obfuscated attention to the wider social issues of equitable access to telecommunications services for all people with disabilities. However the research did result in the production of telecommunications aids for some.

Changing material conditions demonstrated by dynamic technological and economic environments were also problematic for equitable access policies. Often, new technology that had to be locally manufactured became redundant before costs could be recovered. Consequently the social implications of a rights discourses of disability introduced by the IYDP were overshadowed by dynamic economic and technological environments which favoured charity models of policy. Arguably, from Telecom's perspective it was easier to make the expensive aspects of telecommunications services for people with disabilities a social welfare issue and therfore place it in the hands of Governments.

The Broader Context of Policy

A major force for change was the heightened community awareness of disability related issues as a result of the International year of Disabled Persons, in 1981 (Background Paper, No 6 1995-6, p6).

In 1981 the United Nations instituted the International Year of Disabled People (IYDP) and later in 1983 the international decade of the disabled (IDD). These macro developments had far-reaching effects on policy for people with disabilities and instituted the beginnings of a new human rights discourse that challenged earlier social constructions of disability. The impetus for the IYDC is found in two earlier declarations by the UN which formally recognised the rights of people with disabilities; the 1971 Declaration on the Rights of Mentally Retarded Persons and the 1975 Declaration of the Rights of Disabled Persons (Darrow, 1996, 70). As Darrow observes:

... indeed the UN General Assembly heralded a shift from paternalistic ``welfare'' concerns to a disability ``rights'' with two important Declarations in the 1970s (1996, 70).

The significance of the UN human rights emphasis on Australian disability policy is also found in Parliamentary Research records:

The United Nations Declaration of the Rights of Disabled Persons in 1976 was one of the first documents to articulate the view that people with disabilities have the right to a decent life, and moved the focus of the debate to broader economic and political considerations, including human rights (Lindsay, 1995-96, 14).

The above extracts identify that the two documents were seminal to the development of future disability policy and led to the introduction and implementation of anti-discrimination legislation (DSA, 1986, DDA, 1992). Instead of restricting the debate surrounding disability to individuals, their families and special interest groups, the focus shifted to larger societal issues. Policy makers began to perceive the complexities in defining disability and to see that successfully navigating through the issues involved serious social implications; yet little had been written on the broader aspects. Newly-elected Labor Government Minister for Social Services, Dr Don Grimes, recorded his frustration at the dearth of literature available in 1983 in his 1992 Meares Oration:

We originally intended to review the literature, to consult with people, to produce some papers and promote some debate, and then we would all learn. Then in reviewing the literature we found how restricted that literature was. Apart from the National Inquiry into Compensation and Rehabilitation, apart from George Martin's study into the relationship between disability and poverty as part of the Poverty Commission, there were also a few State inquiries... But in all these and in the other literature we could find, it all seemed to have a very narrrow focus. They were all about specific aspects of problems. There were no general papers on the political philosophy or the social policy development in this area (Grimes, 1992, 4)

Grimes' comments as the Social Security Minister, reveal the vacuum in which policy for people with disabilities had formed in Australia. He further observed that although the United States and United Kingdom had created a body of research work, little action had resulted from it. Grimes later adds that significant research had been found from non-English speaking countries but little had been translated and remained inaccessible; a problem that continues (Grimes, 1992, 4).

One of the prinicple objectives of the IYDP as recorded by the Department of Social Security was, ``to increase public understanding of what disability is and awareness of the problems it may bring'' (Dept. Social Security in Gething, 1984, 42). In addition, the individual status of a person with a disability and their ability to participate in society was emphasised. Consequently, traditional stereotypes that constructed people with disabilities as members of an homogeneous, socially passive group were challenged. Policy makers hoped that community attitudes would be changed (Gething, 1984, 42). Hopefully, aims would be achieved by educating the public and using mass media campaigns. Gething's study of the IYDP (1984) argues that although the campaigns were successful in putting disability on the social agenda, they were relatively ineffectual in changing people's attitudes and behaviour toward people with disabilities (1984, 45). However, the data also suggested that no media coverage reinforced negative perceptions. According to Lindsay Gething and comparative international studies, negative stereotypes of people with a disability are reinforced from a lack of contact with people with disability:

Issues included in the questionnaire were based on evidence published both overseas and in Australia which suggests that nonacceptance of disabled people as equal members of the community tends to be associated with inaccurate beliefs along with experience of fears, guilts, uncertainty and discomfort at the prospect of meeting a disabled person (Gething, 1984, 43).

Gething's observations support Fulcher's (1989, 25; see also Chapter four) argument that disability is socially perceived as a disputed and feared phenomenon. From the above extract it appears that media exposure alone was not enough to challenge negative perceptions and suggested that future programs, in addition to media awareness campaigns should place a stronger emphasis on, ``community -based activities which promote personal contact'', (Gething, 1984, 45). Gething's comments reflected Grimes' concerns that disability policy by governments had little social context in policy.

However in terms of raising public awareness levels of people with disabilities, Gething observed that the campaign was successful:

In sum, the majority in all three samples believed the media and IYDP had provided accurate information and had increased their knowledge about disabled people. Thus is can be said that the media campaign was successful in an agenda-setting role (Gething 1984, 44).

Raised public awareness of disability issues facilitated the mobilisation of advocate and lobby groups to pressure governments for access and equity in the community. In his survey of pressure groups and the Federal Parliament, Keith Abbott found that the media are the third most important source of influence on policy after ministers and public departments (Abbott, 1996, 99 ). The events of the IYDP and the consequent media exposure legitimised and empowered people with a disability socially and politically in the eyes of the public. Governments and other bodies could ill-afford to ignore their growing influence. As Abbott observes:

The media is often receptive towards public awareness campaigns conducted by these groups (special interest groups), particularly when they highlight some inequality, prejudice or injustice. The ‘specialialness' of their concerns and interests in a country where ‘fairness' and ‘fairplay' are seen as part of the national ethos lends the political activities of this category of group a certain legitimacy not frequently extended to other categories of group [9]. Furthermore their membership frequently crosses occupational, educational, economic and geographic divides, such that national policy makers can ii-afford to ignore their approaches without risking some degree of electoral fallout (Abbott, 1996, 51).

By positioning people with a disability as a group that deserved equal status in the community, the IYDP enabled them to become politically empowered and sufficiently motivated in confidence to demand their rights from society. As Harold Wilkinson, the director of the Secretariat of the IYDP National Committee of Non-Government Organisations, observed in summing up the year:

Two major things had come out of the year. More self-help groups across the country were being founded and developing an awareness of their contribution and more disabled people saw their roles as important and constructive. The other outstanding result was a greater acceptance in the community that disabled people should be consulted on policy development and planning (Breakthrough, No.15, 1981).

One so-called self-help group that began in the IYDP and grew to have national prominence is Disabled Peoples' International (Australia) (DPI(A)) [10]. DPI(A) was an Australian link to DPI which was described as a ``World Organisation of Persons with Disabilities (Breakthrough No.11, 1981).The organisation was controlled solely by people with disabilities. DPI(A) experienced rapid growth from its inception and before the year's end had established State Assemblies in New South Wales, Victoria, South Australia and the ACT (Breakthrough, No.15, 1981).

DPI(A)'s charter was to, `` work for the rights, dignity and total integration of the 500 million disabled people around the world'' (Breakthrough, No. 15, 1981).

In 1983 DPI(A)'s cause was assisted by a newly-elected Labour Government. The new Minister for Social Security, Dr Donald Grimes, instituted a participative approach to policy related to the concerns of people with disabilities and placed support for self-help groups like DPI(A) high on his agenda. Many involved in the traditional system of the delivery of services for people with disability viewed DPI(A) with some suspicion and even hostility because they challenged the status quo. Grimes' observations of his meeting with members of the National Advisory Council of the Handicapped (NACH), while he was still the Shadow Minister for Social Services, are informative:

When I first went to the Advisory Council meeting that Justice Meares had invited me to, he quite sensibly as chairman said to me: ``Can you give us an outline of what you might do when you become minister, '' And I said:''The first thing I'm going to do is continue the processes that I've already started in a limited way, of talking to people with disabilities and see what they think.'' I was immediately interrupted by a member of that Council who I later came to know quite well, not particularly favourably. He said: ``Who are you going to talk to?'' I was a bit taken aback by this because I thought the answer was obvious. Then I remembered I'd recently seen in his State a group of paraplegics and quadraplegics who'd started an organisation. And I recalled that I had also with people who had established a nascent sort of outfit called DPI(A). So I mentioned these. And he growled back at me: ``Oh you're only going to talk to the dissidents.'' Now in those days the only people who talked about dissidents were member of the Politburo in the USSR. So I realised immediately the extent of the problem we faced (Grimes, 1996, 3).

Grimes' attendance at the NACH meeting prepared him for the entrenched resistant attitudes to participative-consultation processes he would soon face as Minister for Social Security and later as Minister for Community Services. The extract is also a poignant example of the clash of human rights, medical and charity discourses that have contested the social construction of disability. Fundamentally, the discourses differ in their positioning of people with disabilities. Medical and charity models position disabled people as objects, while human rights discourses positions people with disabilities as subjects. These concepts are elaborated later.

When Grimes became Minister of Social Security in 1983, he began a program of consultation and participation by people with disabilities in policy by: (a) instituting a nation-wide review of disability services, (b) setting up participative peak bodies representing the interests of people with disabilites and, (c) designing legislation that would extend their rights of access to all Commonwealth and State services (See Breakthrough, 1983-1987; Grimes, 1996;Lindsay, 1996) . Within this environment Telecom experienced increasing pressure to include people with disabilities in their consultations. Later DPI(A) emerged as a major player in the Telecom Australia Consumer Consultative process initiated by consumer organisations and Telecom in 1989 (pers. comms. PDPIA; CTNPA, 1997) . DPI(A) received funding support by the Department of Social Security in the form of a direct grant (pers.comm. PDPIA, 1997).

Shortly after taking office, the Minister for Social Security oversaw a comprehensive twelve month nation-wide review of Commonwealth and State provided assistance programs for groups of people with disabilities. It was known as the Handicapped Programs Review [11]. Meetings were held in sixty-five cities and towns by officers from Social Security with attendance and participation levels by interested parties that caused other politicians envy (Breakthrough, No.32, 1983; Grimes, 1996, 4). The interested parties included people with disabilities and their families and not just professional representatives from professional agencies (eg. doctors). At the time this was a unique factor in the consultative process. Another unique feature of the HPR involved the officers collecting data. Many of the officers had disabilities which indicated the extent of participation that Grimes expected the process to involve. Grimes' comments of the HPR are instructive:

Members of Parliament used to complain bitterly to me that these people are coming to their towns and having meetings which were being attended far better than any political meeting for years. And to those meeting came people who were frustrated, fed up, who wanted to air their views and had never been able to. And many of them also discovered that there were other people in the same boat, that they could get together and that they had actually some chance of helping in the process of change (Grimes, 1996, 4).

A new era in participation in policy decisions for people with disabilities had begun. The HPR was overseen by a new organisation , the Disability Council of Australia (DACA), and represented people with disability at the Federal level. DACA replaced NACH as the peak disability advisory committee to the Government and its members were directly appointed by the Minister (Lindsay, 1996, 15). DACA's primary role was to, ``provide advice to the Commonwealth Government on all aspects of Commonwealth policy affecting people with disabilities (1996, 15). Consequently, although it was instituted by the DSS, it had wider inter-departmental relevance and therefore represented a further step towards an integrated approach to disability policy and service provision (Lindsay, 1996, 16). [12]

Most of the rights movement for people with a disability by-passed developments within Telecom in the early eighties (pers. comms.PDPIA; PNFBCA, 1997). As discussed in the last section, Telecom was shifting from a service-engineering culture towards one with a product-based marketing orientation, and issues related to people with a disability were not a high priority.

In 1987, Telecom established a Disability Tariff Concession Policy that provided further concessions to people with disabilities purchasisng modified standard telephone accessories. Most of the accessories were released in the IYDP. However, TTYs were not included in the concessions, consequently 17, 000 people experiencing major difficulties with telecommunications did not benefit from the concessions (Wilson & Keating, 1981, 42). In addition, to the dismay of many, the label concession, reinforces charity models of disability and negates equal access to telecommunications services as a right for people with disabilities (pers. comms. PDPIA; AADPA, 1997).

This section described, explained and analysed the formal introduction of a rights discourse of disability in Australia. In addition, a United Nations resolution instituted the IYDP which raised the public awareness of people with disabilites in the community. Following Labor's victory in the 1983 Federal elections, Don Grimes the new Social Security achieved bi-partisan support for his rights-based initiatives. The initiatives included people with disabilities as active contributors in a consultation and participation program to how government services could be best delivered. Finally, the rights - based initiative s in Social Security had little impact in challenging Telecom's medical and charity models of disability.

Further Information

Draft of 7 December 1999. Comments and Corrections Welcome
Copyright © Michael J Bourk & Tom Worthington 1999.