US Deaf Education

Two professors tackle the issue of English literacy in the Deaf community in this TEDx video recorded at Ohio's Kent State University.

Remote Implant Options Approved

The U.S. government has given the world's largest cochlear implant maker permission to have follow-up programming sessions remotely. Cochlear Limited says the FDA approval will enable remote care for Nucleus Cochlear Implant recipients and clinicians. A Colorado audiologist says, "This approval will open the door for so many cochlear implant patients who have trouble accessing continued care because they can't travel to an implant center." Read more about the effort here.

Should oralism be promoted within the deaf community?

Should oralism be promoted within the deaf community? The BBC has a video debate here.

When a deaf singer gets death threats from other deaf people, something’s wrong

Freelance journalist Josh Salisbury makes a plea in the Guardian that deaf people "need to move beyond the oralism v sign language split." It was that divide, he tells readers, that has led to the social media backlash against America’s Got Talent finalist Mandy Harvey. Salisbury writes:

It also risks promoting a myth of a militant deaf community, acting as jealous gatekeepers of what it really means to be deaf. A casual observer reading the story about Harvey could be forgiven for thinking that the deaf community, in America or elsewhere, is far more intolerant than it really is.

Read the full story here.

Study: How the Brain Decodes Pitch may improve Implants

How cochlear implants convey pitch to users could be improved based on a new study out of the University of Washington. The research is focused on where in the inner ear a sound activates. You can read more about it here. Details of the study are in the Journal of Neuroscience here.

The Impact of Proposed Tax Code Changes on the Deaf

Congress is looking at ways to change the tax code and the bill currently before the House would impact the Deaf Community in several ways. Among the things that would no longer be tax deductible: the cost of buying, training and maintaining a service animal and improvements to a property rented by a person with a disability, such as special lighting. Another provision "would reduce the progress made over the last few decades to improve public access for people with disabilities." Read more here.

Inspired by Implant to become an Audiologist

J. Connor Sullivan

J. Connor Sullivan got his cochlear implant when he was still a teenager. He was so affected by the change in his life, Sullivan became an audiologist. He writes about what happened after the surgery:

Once I returned to school, as a freshman at the University of Oklahoma, my life was changed in more ways than I could imagine. I had made great strides with my hearing through my Cochlear Implant since my activation day. Not to mention, since getting my Cochlear Implant, my purpose for my life had revealed itself. That spring in 2011, I decided to pursue a doctorate in audiology so I can work with people who have hearing loss like myself.

Read the full article here.

The first deaf-led theatre company in the UK

Paula Garfield was frustrated with the barriers facing deaf actors. So she did something about it: Garfield started the first deaf-led theatre company in the UK. Fifteen years later, Deafinitely Theatre is still going strong. She writes:

Over the years I became disillusioned with the world of acting, and theatre more generally, having experienced a lack of deaf awareness and bullying from others in the industry. One year-long tour took a particular toll on me. As the only deaf member of the company I was ignored and poorly treated by my fellow actors and made to feel that, as a deaf person, I should be grateful I’d been offered the work in the first place.

Read her full story in the Independent here.

Beauty blogger uses ASL

Beauty Blogger Catherine Martinez

A beauty blogger is using sign language in her tutorials. Catherine Martinez says she wants to maek her video's more accessible to the deaf and hard-of-hearing, having been inspired by a deaf classmate at NYU. Read the full story here.

Big Grant for Deaf Teacher Training

The Dept. of Education is giving a Texas school nearly $150,000 to start a program combining educational psychology and deaf education. The
will use the $147,000 grant to train a dozen "new school psychologists that specialize in deaf education, and 27 teachers of the deaf in how to apply principles of educational psychology in their work with children." There's more information from the school here.

America's deaf team

At Gallaudet University in Washington, D.C., the Bison football team is tackling lessons beyond the field. CBS News has a video report on America's Deaf Team.

Deaf Singer Gets Death Threats

Some people in the Deaf community sent Mandy Harvey death threats for her appearance on NBC's America's Got Talent. She says some activists objected to her "promoting a 'hearing' activity." Harvey got worldwide attention after working her way to the show's finals. She tells the BBC, "I used to get some pretty strongly-worded letters and death threats. I got a lot of backlash from certain people in that community because I was promoting oralism." Read the full story here. Below is a video of one of her AGT appearances.

Woman raped, robbed near Gallaudet

A woman was robbed and sexually assaulted across the street from Gallaudet University in Washington, DC this past weekend. Fox-5 in DC has a video report.

Discrimination Against Deaf People In The US

Two leaders in the Deaf community sat down with KCUR, public radio from Kansas City, Missouri, and discussed the "history of persecution against people with deafness in this country — and the milestones along the path to equal rights." Gallaudet University history professor William Ennis and Deaf International co-founder Debbie Buchholz. She says:

image: http://dicommunitychurch.org

I believe that people in the minority will have to fight, probably for the rest of their life. But that it's critical not to give up but to keep fighting because everyone has a right to receive the same things. And so it's important for people to realize that this is not over. Even though it's better, it's not over.. There's so many deaf people that want to work, so many deaf people who were criticized for not having a job and they're actually looking. And they're applying within and they're being turned down because just that piece of being deaf scares employers. And so they want to work and they are looking for positions. And if the accommodations were right and proper, they would all be able to work.

Read the entire interview here
.

What's wrong with Language Gloves?

image from UCSD academic paper
published in the PLOS One journal
describing a gesture-recognizing glove 

What's wrong with wearable technologies like the sign-language glove? Linguist and writer Michael Erard writes that the effort is "rooted in the preoccupations of the hearing world, not the needs of Deaf signers." The gesture-recogniztion glove overlooks the "intricacies of the language, as well as the needs of signers." Despite it's high cost and irrelavancy to signers, the technology has won prize money for its creators and "college students were gaining accolades and scholarships for technologies based on an element of Deaf culture, while Deaf people themselves are legally and medically underserved." Read more in the Atlantic about Why Sign-Language Gloves Don't Help Deaf People here.

On Deafness and Music

"When I got a cochlear implant seven years ago, after being profoundly deaf for my entire life, hearing friends and acquaintances started asking me the same few questions: Had I heard music yet? Did I like it? What did it sound like?" That's how Rachel Kolb started her essay On Deafness and Music published in the New York Times. You can read it here.

Growing Up With Deaf Parents

"Many CODAs act as interpreters for their parents from a young age, and this can mean taking on responsibilities generally reserved for adults.. In sign language, there are ways you can express or say things that seem better or more appropriate in English.. We sometimes sign something because it really captures what we're thinking." Read more in a VICE Austrailia here.