'ACCESS News' Goes Live
New show reaches Austin's deaf community
By Jordan Smith, Fri., Sept. 23, 2011
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.
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