It Has Always Been A Design Problem
My parents started this company almost by accident.
And for fifteen years, it wasn't even legally named TCS.
My dad fixed TTYs at Gallaudet. He was the guy everyone came to when their printer broke. So he and my mom opened a walk-in computer shop, a mom-and-pop storefront for people to bring in their towers and printers. He wanted to call it TCS (Technical Computing Services). But he knew that in the Yellow Pages, a name starting with T would land near the back of the book. So for fifteen years, on every legal document, the company was named Abacus and Bytes. Only in the ads did it say TCS.
In the early 2000s, a program inside the Department of Defense started hiring deaf employees. The office serving them knew my parents from the community and asked if they could supply screen readers. That's how the first government contract happened.
Then, because of the trust my parents built, the same office asked if they could “supply” a sign language interpreter. For a year and a half, they said no. Every time the request came in for an interpreter, for captioning, the answer was the same: we don't do that. It wasn't until around the thirtieth ask that they gave in and subcontracted the work to a friend who ran an interpreting agency. It went so well that within months, they were subcontracting interpreters directly.
The government's scale as an employer of people with disabilities is what created the volume of demand and why the demand from that single shop grew large enough to become a company.
They grew fast, but like any fast-growing business the challenges were many. They had to fight to be in business. What I learned later from them, is that they couldn't tell the difference between "this is hard because we're Deaf" and "this is hard because we're entrepreneurs." They'd absorbed every barrier as personal failure because without language or communication access they couldn’t see it any other way.
They persisted and continued to build a successful business. As their daughter, they asked me to come in and continue their legacy, so that the Deaf communities had access to the knowledge and resources that ensured full participation.
The room only works when
everyone in it can fully participate.
None of it was planned.
What I understood, because I'd grown up inside it as a CODA, was that a room either works or it doesn't. When communication is designed with intention, people show up as themselves and do their best work. When it isn't, everyone in that room is performing, translating, managing, guessing.
That's not a deaf problem or a hearing problem. It's a design problem, and it shows up everywhere.
When people can use their own language and express themselves freely, they don't have to adjust who they are to be understood. They can simply be themselves, and in doing so, thrive.
This is the passion and perspective at the heart of TCS. Today, we are a national leader in communication access, with an entire ecosystem of companies united by one shared belief: Access Just Is.
Our work is rooted in Deaf communities in all their diversity because of our origins and deep, domain expertise. The insights we've gained help organizations create communication environments where more people can fully participate.
Thank you for being here,
JESSICA AIELLO
CEO, TCS Teams
Becoming More of Who We are
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