The high point of the Heartland Disability Compliance Alliance was a membership of 1,408 Heartland Community web sites which met or exceeded the Bobby level A or level 1 conformance. In the period 1997-1999 Bobby was the de facto Validator. Communities no longer exist at Yahoo. Heartland as a community mentioned below is for historical purposes.
The DCA logo consists of four images. Bottom center Web Access Symbol by CPB/WGBH National Center for Accessible Media (NCAM). Chosen from among 17 symbols, this image was used by webmasters to denote that their site contains accessibility features to accommodate the needs of disabled users. The symbol was always accompanied by its description and alt-text tag. This image was created by Stormship Studios of Boston, Massachusetts.
Top L to R: Alexander Graham Bell, Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet and Valerie Sutton. Background of each is provided below. Bell and Gallaudet were revered by my grandmother, who literally sat at the feet of Bell. I was introduced to Valerie Sutton via her SignWriting in the 1990's and admired her work.
Alexander Graham Bell, Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet and Valerie Sutton took different paths toward helping those who are deaf and hard of hearing. Three very different people with three very different contributions.
Alexander Graham Bell
Alexander Graham Bell not only invented the telephone, but he also worked on a theory that Deaf people could learn to speak, which later became known as "oralism."
The central interest of his life was education for deaf children or that he was one of the strongest proponents of oralism in the United States. Bell and his father before him studied the physiology of speech. His mother was hard of hearing, and while she had enough hearing to use an ear tube for one-on-one conversations, Bell often used the British, two-handed manual alphabet to communicate with her. He also knew the sign language used in the United States.
Bell was helpful in finding a teacher for Helen Keller, who was deaf and blind. Annie Sullivan, Keller's teacher and mentor.
Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet
At a young age, Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet (1787-1851), a Yale-educated American, became aware of the lack of educational opportunities for disadvantaged children. While a traveling salesman in Kentucky and Ohio, he taught poor rural children history, geography and the Bible. This experience led him to seek theological training and, as a minister, he returned to traveling from town to town.
Gallaudet's future changed when he met Alice Cogswell, a young deaf mute girl. He became determined to help her and, upon the request of her father, went to Europe to learn educational methods for teaching the deaf. Dr. Mason Cogswell and others had offered Gallaudet the opportunity to open and become principal of the first deaf school in the United States.
Thomas Gallaudet's work was instrumental because it allowed society to understand that those who are deaf could be educated. His school was one of the country's early grass roots efforts that diversified education and brought it to the disadvantaged. Also, his work helped develop the American Sign Language, the most widely-used form of communication for the deaf community in the world.
Valerie Sutton
Sutton Movement Writing is a global writing system and although the invention turned 33 years old in 2007, its acceptance by the global community is just beginning. The seeds were planted in the previous millennium, but the true use of the writing system will be in the 21st century.
SignWriting also started to spread in the late 1990's, around the 25th year of its development. SignWriting, although used by hundreds of people today, is still a writing system in its infancy, since more years are needed to solidify writing grammar and teaching people to read and write. But the phenomenon of "reading and writing Sign Language Literature" is now occurring in 16 countries...something that has never happened before.
Sometimes people confuse SignWriting with other transcription systems used by linguistic research, or they confuse DanceWriting with other dance notation systems. These other systems do not have the same goals or uses. There is no way to truly categorize Sutton Movement Writing, for there is no equivalent in history.
However, Heartland Community Leaders have taken the same path toward helping our disabled, by making their web sites "functionally disability compliant" in accordance with the "Bobby" requirements. In those early years it was not possible to technically meet validation requirements due to server side coding by Geocities and Yahoo, the intent to make web sites more accessible to our disABLED, meet the stated objectives of CPB/WGBH National Center for Accessible Media (NCAM) and the display of the Web Access Symbol.
Visitors to Heartland Community Leader web sites who are members of the Disability Compliance Alliance can be assured that there are no barriers to finding helpful information, personal interests, and family centered information which will make your visit not only worthwhile, but educational too!
Changes for better or worse, brought about by the acquisition of GeoCities by Yahoo, eventually resulted in the loss of a community identity and Heartland was dropped when the new Ring Surf community was established as DCA. Everyone was given the opportunity to join the new community, while maintaining a membership in HDCA.
Copyright:1986-2007