ACCESS News, the new monthly news and entertainment program anchored by Tamara Suiter-Ocuto, who is deaf, premieres Sunday, Sept. 25, at 1pm on KLRU. Dvorah Ben-Moshe and her business partner Ken Hurley, who founded the nonprofit Civication Inc., created the program as a way to engage Austin’s sizable deaf and hard-of-hearing community in politics and national, state, and local affairs. The show kicks off with U.S. Rep. Michael McCaul, R-Austin, as its first guest. Suiter-Ocuto interviewed McCaul about cyberwars, terrorism, the war on drugs, the national debt crisis, and national security issues, according to a press release. Future guests scheduled to appear on the half-hour program – broadcast in American Sign Language and English and closed-captioned – are Austin Police Chief Art Acevedo, former Texas Department of Agriculture commissioner-turned-commentator Jim Hightower, Public Citizen’s Texas Director Tom “Smitty” Smith, Austin American-Statesman writer Ken Herman, and UT biology professor and climate change expert Camille Parmesan. For more on ACCESS News, see “Tuning In to Deaf Community,” Feb. 25.
This article appears in September 23 • 2011.