DeafDigest Mid-Week edition, December 30, 2015

— deaf girl told not to play sports because of her deafness

A young deaf girl wanted to play basketball. She was told
to forget it because of her deafness. Years later, she is
playing professional women’s basketball for a team in Great
Britain. That deaf woman is Tori Faieta, who played for
the USA national deaf women’s basketball team and right
now for the Leicester Riders of the professional
Women’s British Basketball League. Her picture is at:

http://deafdigest.com/young-deaf-girl-told-not-to-play-sports/

— real reason Spring Awakening will be closed on Broadway

Why is Spring Awakening closing on Broadway when this play
has been popular, and winning praises from everywhere?
Could it have continued much longer than its short
Broadway stand? Broadway is a business. And the longer
the plays continue, the more it prevents new plays
from joining the Broadway list. And eventually in the
long run, people get tired of seeing same old plays!

 
— angry deaf student gives up

Some months back, deaf student William Sears could
not follow the lectures of the Memorial University
professor Ranee Panjabi. Sears depended on
assistive listening devices and the professor
refused to wear it on around her neck because of
her religious principles. This case went to
mediation in Canada in hopes of reaching a
solution that will make the professor and
student happy. The mediation got nowhere
as both sides got stubborn. As a result,
he gave up. Don’t know what has become of
him now. Very sad.

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DeafDigest Mid-Week edition, December 29, 2015

— from a hospital orderly to a medical photographer

Mohammad Aslam, deaf, is a medical photographer
at a hospital in Kashmir. He is responsible for
taking pictures of patients – before and after
their surgical operations and also during their
medical treatments. The hospital originally hired
him as orderly, responsible for helping doctors
and nurses with non-medical tasks. The hospital
needed a medical photographer and gave him this
job! His picture is at:

http://deafdigest.com/deaf-surgical-photographer/

— a confusing newspaper story

Few days ago a newspaper in Kansas ran an obit of
a deaf woman. The obit said she attended University
of Kansas School for the Deaf in Lawrence, Kansas,
where she won a certification as a lip-reader.
There is a Kansas School for the Deaf, but it is
in Olathe. And there no such a thing as University
of Kansas School for the Deaf. Also deaf schools
do not give out lipreading certificaes on graduation
day. Obviously the reporter did not know what
he was writing about.

— a messy deaf adoption case in Australia

A deaf mother gave up her child upon birth.
A deaf female same-sex couple, friends of
that deaf mother, agreed to adopt the baby.
Three years later, the deaf mother had
second thoughts and wanted the child back.
The Family Court, confronted with this
mess on their hands – made a decision.
The child will go back to her natural
mother even though she was never raised
by her and her  husband.  The child will spend a
weekend a month with the adoptive parents.
And the child’s last name will be of her
natural mother and not of the adoptive
couple. It was a solution no one was
happy with.

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DeafDigest Mid-Week edition, December 28, 2015

— a sign language calendar

Nakashima Netsuke is a mother of a deaf daughter
in Japan. They both communicate in Japanese
Sign Language. Wanting to create awareness
of sign language used by the deaf, Nakashima
published a Year 2016 Sign Language calendar
that will be distributed in hospitals and
public facilities in Akita-shi, a city in
the northeastern part of Japan. The picture is at:

http://deafdigest.com/sign-language-calendar/

— deaf person is reason for peace between India & Pakistan

For years India and Pakistan have been enemies.
Hopefully there is peace, helped by Indian Prime
Minister Narendra Modi visiting Pakistani Prime
Minister Nawaz Sharif. What helped thaw the
chill between both nations is a deaf woman –
Geeta! She was lost in Pakistan and held in
that nation for about 12 years before being
returned to India. Public officials wanted to
make sure Geeta’s transfer from Pakistan
to India went smoothly, and this led to
relations getting more friendly!

— getting more strict with real time captions

For years deaf people have complained about bad
real time captions. Hopefully no more! The
National Court Reporters Association
have revised its certification criteria
to help captioners get better training.
The new certificate is called Certified
Realtime Captioner.

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DeafDigest Mid-Week edition, December 25, 2015

— trying to become the first deaf doctor in Japan

Japan has about 70 hard of hearing doctors; they
all function as hearing. There are no profoundly
deaf or Culturally Deaf doctors. Hattori Norishige,
who is deaf, is a student at the Hamamatsu
University School of Medicine in Hamamatsu-shi,
eastern Japan. His goal is to become Japan’s
first profoundly deaf physician. He attended
a gathering of deaf people in the health
care profession in USA and was amazed to find
so many profoundly deaf medical professionals.
His picture is at:

http://deafdigest.net/hoping-to-become-first-deaf-physican-in-his-nation/

— frustrations of a deaf patient at a hospital

A deaf patient speaks very well. He just cannot
lipread. Yet a hospital has communication problems
with him when the interpreter is not around. It
is fine when the interpreter is on duty. The
angry deaf wife said that she should be able to
check on her husband’s medical issues at all
times instead of having to scramble around to
find an interpeter each time he is not feeling good.

— Deaf drivers in Saudi Arabia

Saudi Arabia allows the deaf to drive cars.
This nation also has Lyft service for
people that need rides. Could the deaf of
Saudi Arabia make a living as Lyft drivers?
Well, there was a story today of Prince
Alwaleed, Saudi Arabia, investing his
money in Lyft ownership. Would he
encourage deaf Saudi Arabians that own
cars to become Lyft drivers?

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DeafDigest Mid-Week edition, December 24, 2015

— a success in a very tough job

A real tough job is waiting on tables at a busy restaurant.
It can be hectic for a hearing person – diners demand quick
service, complain of wrong dishes, of dishes too salty,
drinks not strong enough, etc. Yet, deaf Noah Wimberly has
been working as a waiter for ten years at the Social Southern
Table in Lafayette, LA. Knowing patrons get nervous upon
being served by a deaf waiter, he shows his card to tell
them he is deaf and then uses a notepad to communicate
with them on drinks and meals. After a while, these nervous
patrons relax and enjoy their meals. Hearing people
think he is very brave about it, but he doesn’t think so,
just comes with the job (and great tips!). See his
picture with introductory card at:

http://deafdigest.com/introductory-card-by-deaf-waiter/

— more about the popular deaf movie

Last week DeafDigest mentioned the deaf movie
“The Belier Family” being very popular right now
in France. DeafDigest editor has not watched
the movie but hopes to watch it some day.
Anyway – in that movie, there was a story of
the deaf father (farmer) fighting with the
town mayor on farming land issues. He accused
the mayor of wanting to grab the land for
his own purposes. As a result, the deaf father
decided to run for the mayor. And who was his
interpreter during the election campaign –
his hearing teenage daughter! She was very
unhappy about it, because she was trying to
deal with her own issues – as a Coda and as
a teenager, trying to grow up fast!

— comparing captions on different TV sets

A deaf man went to Best Buy and was able to
connect the antenna to different TV models –
Insignia, Toshiba, Sceptre, Vizio and Sony.
He noticed that captions were different with
each TV model. Some captions were great while
some were terrible. Keep in mind, the Best
Buy clerk allowed him to connect the antenna
to each TV set. Other Best Buy stores may
not allow it.

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DeafDigest Mid-Week edition, December 23, 2015

— eye hospital depends on a deaf man

The Aravind Eye Hospital in Madurai, India depends on
a deaf man to keep it operating successfully every day.
S. Poornachandran (first name not known) is deaf and
was a welder. He changed careers, repairing and
maintaining hundreds of medical instruments and machines.
Over the years he has trained ophthalmologists and
hospital administrators on how to keep these
medical instruments in top operating condition.
He has even trained professionals from many
different nations. A hospital administrator said
it was not necessary to hire engineers from
other nations to come and fix these machines.
Does this deaf man have perfect speech? No,
he cannot speak at all; he uses gestures and
demonstrations to teach people the right way
to fix these machines. His picture is at:

http://deafdigest.com/hospital-depends-on-deaf-man/

 
— anti-lipreading movie

Many hearing people think deaf people can lipread.
“Can You Read My Lips?” is a new short movie, produced by
a deaf woman, Rachel Kolb. She explains, in the filming,
why perfect lipreading is impossible. She agrees that
30 percent of the words can be lip-readable, but says
the remaining 70 percent can make the conversation
impossible.

— TTY is out; RTT is in

The TTY network started in the sixties; it forever
changed the Deaf World. But for the past 20 years
it has become obsolete as more deaf people use
emails, videos and social media to communicate
with each other. DeafDigest editor does not even
have a TTY at home. RTT, according to one high
tech article, may be what we need to communicate
with each other. RTT means real-time text,
and even AT&T, which created the TTY network,
is in favor of it. What is RTT? When a person
types something, the person on the other end
of the line can see it as it is being typed
one letter at a time. With the TTY, one had
to wait until the person has finished typing.
A team of researchers from Gallaudet, the
University of Wisconsin-Madison and Sweden’s
Omnitor have been working on this project.
A big problem? FCC hates it!

 
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DeafDigest Mid-Week edition, December 22, 2015

 
— a famous deaf invisible artist

Deaf British artist William Agnew became famous for
his paintings of Queen Elizabeth practicing her
British Sign Language fingerspelling. Where are
these pictures? A mystery – these paintings cannot
be found – thrown away, stolen, misplaced, lost
or destroyed by fire or whatever! So, were his
drawings invisible?

His picture is at:
http://deafdigest.com/deaf-artist-with-invisible-paintings/

— deaf-friendly store and hearing-friendly store

Ethik Event is a French events management company with
a strong interest in the needs of the deaf and of the
disabled. Aware that many hearing merchants do not realize
how unfriendly their stores and shops are to the deaf,
Ethik Event has come up with two demonstrations. First
model store is hearing-friendly; the second model store is
deaf-friendly. The deaf-friendly store has flashing signalers,
cash registers with display read outs, captions on their
mounted TV sets, catalogs with pictures and descriptions,
etc. So far, these demonstrations were a success in
Paris and Grenoble. There are plans to set up these
demonstrations in other major European cities.

 
— Spring Awakening made it

Broadway in Manhattan is world’s theatrical capital.
Every year there are 35-40 new plays. Some succeed,
some are flops, quickly closed after a short run.
Deaf West’s Spring Awakening has made it. The
Associated Press announced their list of top 10
Broadway plays for 2015. Making it at #10
is Spring Awakening.

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DeafDigest Mid-Week edition, December 21, 2015

— the world’s most difficult yacht race

The annual yacht race, from Sydney to Hobart
(Australian cities, 630 miles apart) is said to be
the world’s most difficult race. It is a big event
in the yacht racing community. One of the crew members
on one yacht crew is Gavin Reid. He is deaf.
You can see his picture at:

http://deafdigest.com/deaf-member-of-yacht-racing-crew/

— Google’s comment on captions

Google is one of the world’s biggest technology companies
(Gmail, Youtube, Cloud computing, etc). What does Google
have to say about captions? The company president said
that they want top quality captions on everything and
that they are still working on perfect captioning.

 
— Agbell’s invention we didn’t know about

Many deaf people hate Alexander Graham Bell because
of his pro-oral, anti-ASL beliefs. And that the
telephone he was said to have invented proved
useless to the deaf for many years — until the
TTY was invented in the early sixties. Did Bell
invent the TTY? No, but he developed the photophone.
It is a special telecommunications device that
sent out radio waves. The TTY used radio waves
to send out messages. Was Bell a complicated
person – yes, but he loved to invent things.

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