What r- initially drew you to this, and what keeps you committed to it today?

So I was a print journalist back in the 1980s, and I was disability ignorant, I would say, back then.

But I did stories related to disabled people, and that got me thinking about disability.

And then, uh, when I went and got my master's in journalism at University of Maryland College Park, I found out about Society for Disability Studies and ended up doing my master's thesis on the media coverage in The New York Times and Washington Post before, during, and after Deaf President Now, um, which was in 1988.

And, um, then I enjoyed teaching.

I had a chance to teach some while I was getting my master's.

Went to my first Society for Disability Studies meeting in Rockville, Maryland, and it was like, "Ooh, I found my people." But it was great, except there was very few people in Society for Disability Studies back then that cared about media because there was this disconnect, I think, between understanding how we can make change and how we need to have the media be part of that.

Right.

[laughs]

Um, my name is Beth Haller.

I have a PhD from Temple University in Mass Media and Communication from 1995, and I started working in this area.

Well, I was a print journalist before I became an academic, and so I did several stories about the disability community and, um, like a series on people with Down syndrome in the '80s and a series on, um, post-polio syndrome.

So I was not completely a novice, [laughs] but I still didn't have, I don't think, disability awareness.

Um, so when I started in grad school in 1989, um, in my master's program, it was one year after the, um, Deaf President Now movement in Washington, DC.

I was getting my master's at University of Maryland, College Park, which was a few miles from Gallaudet.

Yeah.