On Thursday May 18th, a Deaf climber from Malaysia, Muhammad Hawari Hashim, summited the tallest peak in the world – Mount Everest. However, as Malaysians celebrated the country’s first Deaf Everest summit, Hawari went missing during his descent to Camp 3. After a long, intense search that has been ongoing since May 19th, Muhammad Hawari Hashim remains missing after official search and rescue efforts have ended. His wife, also Deaf, and two young children are hoping for an extension of the search.

Internet access costs in Canada are among the highest in the world. That cost hurts the Canadian Deaf community because many affordable plans have limitations on data use. People who go over the limit get bumped down to slower speeds that don’t support video calls. This impacts Deaf customers who rely on video calling to connect with people. Video uses more data than texts or voice, so Deaf customers who rely on video calling often exceed their data limits quickly. On June 1, the CRTC, a Canadian telecommunications agency, will receive new accessibility reports from companies that offer Internet access in Canada.

Kabernet School for the Deaf, a rural Deaf and Blind school in Kenya for about 75 students that has endured years of hard times has now closed down. Staff say they have not been paid for nearly two years and are calling on the Kenyan government’s Ministry of Education to fully fund the school and provide for repairs and upgrades. The school was built in 1995. Today, the electricity has been disconnected, the water well needs to be redrilled and buildings are in poor condition.

In Lima, a young student who is Deaf passed her tests and was accepted into a university. She informed the university officials that she was Deaf and needed sign language interpreters. However, on the first day of classes, she was told that there were no sign language interpreters. This is happening at the María Araoz Pinto Higher Institute, an entity attached to the Ministry of Education and which has more than 40 years of service. A lawyer took on her issue and made the case of the applicant known through social networks and demanded that the university authorities provide a solution as soon as possible to the problem.

BibloRed, an organization in Bogota that focuses on ensuring that the general population has access to reading skills has created and released 40 different courses, two of which are beneficial for the Deaf community: 1. A Colombian Sign Language course to promote the acquisition of the language, including Deaf culture and basic signs, and 2. a course that focuses on caregivers and family members of Deaf individuals.