Karen Peltz Strauss is the Deputy Chief of the Consumer and Governmental Affairs Bureau at the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). As one of the country’s premier disability rights attorneys for more than three decades, Strauss has led nationwide efforts to ensure federal safeguards to electronic communications and video programming by people with disabilities. Strauss has authored several landmark disability laws, including mandates for closed captioning, video description, access to communications services and devices, telecommunications relay services, hearing aid compatibility, and accessible 911 services. Prior to joining the FCC, Strauss was legal counsel for Gallaudet University’s National Center for Law and Deafness, the National Association of the Deaf, and consultant for various providers of accessibility services. Throughout her career, Strauss frequently testified before Congress as an expert witness on accessibility legislation and presented at hundreds of conferences in the U.S. and across the globe. Strauss’s 2006 book – A New Civil Right: Telecommunications Equality for Deaf and Hard of Hearing Americans – provides an in-depth look at forty years of telecom advocacy by Americans who are deaf and hard of hearing. A graduate of the University of Pennsylvania Law School, Strauss also holds an L.L.M from the Georgetown University Law Center and an honorary doctorate degree from Gallaudet University, the latter for her work on communications access. Among Strauss’s many awards are those received from the National Consumers League, Telecommunications for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing, Inc., the National Association of the Deaf, the D.C. Mayor’s Office, and the Alliance for Public Technology.