Deaf Advocate Marcella M. Meyer Dies

Marcella M. Meyer, a prominent member of the deaf community who spent nearly half of her life working on deaf rights issues, died on May 26 in Anaheim, CA. She was 84. Meyer, whose own deafness was the result of a case of scarlet fever when she was 6 years old, spent nearly half her life as a deaf rights advocate.

Among her many accomplishments, Meyer helped establish the Greater Los Angeles Council on Deafness, a deaf rights advocacy group. She lobbied successfully for closed captioning on TV in the 1970’s, and won the right for the deaf to serve jury duty in the 1980’s.

Meyer was also instrumental in establishing a telephone service in California that relayed messages between the hearing and the hearing-impaired, which ultimately led to the development of a nationwide system.