Jim House

Jim House is the Disability Integration Manager for the Coalition on Inclusive Emergency Planning (CIEP) at the Washington State Independent Living Council. CIEP is a statewide advisory group that focuses on effective communications, programmatic and physical access, and other functional access needs (AFN) and issues impacting people with disabilities and other marginalized communities in emergencies. Under his leadership, CIEP has grown its stakeholder network to include community advocates with disabilities and AFN, emergency management professionals, and other community based organization leaders. CIEP stakeholders participate in planning, exercises, assessments, and other activities, leading to a growth in services in Washington such as Text-to-911, accessible alerting technologies, ASL Alerts, equitable public health responses, and more. As a subject matter expert, Jim participates in several forums covering access issues with Information and Communications Technologies (ICT) before, during, and after disasters.

In 2015, as a result of Jim's ongoing leadership and community involvement, Portland, Oregon passed the first captioning activation ordinance requiring all television sets in public places to display captions during business hours. This ordinance has been emulated in more than a dozen cities around the country. In 2021, Washington became the first to enact this law statewide, followed by Oregon and Minnesota in 2023.

Jim has returned to Telecommunications for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing, Inc. (TDI) as a Board Member. His accomplishments include a book, A PATH TOWARD AN ACCESSIBLE WORLD documenting TDI's 50 years of advocacy, implementing the Communications and Video Accessibility Act of 2010, numerous presentations on consumer advocacy, television and Internet captioning issues. He wrote successful grant proposals, some resulting in nearly $3M in federal funding to develop emergency preparedness training programs and other projects. He has been involved in planning for publications, conferences and workshops on accessibility. With a layman’s understanding of “how things work”, Jim has given sophistication to various publications highlighting best practices and leadership in access to communications and information technologies for professionals and consumers alike.

Session: Weds, April 17 @ 4:00 PM