On this date: Long-time Gally prof killed

A former Gallaudet professor was killed on this day (Dec. 18) in 2013 when she was hit by a car leaving a parking garage where she lived in Washington, DC. Peggie Parsons was 90 years old and had spent her life setting up schools around the world that would teach sign and voice and wrote several books. She taught art history and retired from Gallaudet in 1988.

How deaf researchers are reinventing science communication

Science jargon can be a barrier to deaf researchers when there isn't a good sign for an English word. In an attempt to avoid a ridiculous amount of fingerspelling, there is an effort "to help ASL catch up by inventing new signs." Verge Science visited graduate student Lorne Farovitch in his Rochester, New York lab to find out more.

Getting Police up to speed with Terp App

Bellingham’s Hearing, Speech and Deaf Center in Washington State is working with the local police department to get officers access to live interpreters for the deaf. KIRO-TV has a video report.

‘Silent restaurant’ opens in Beijing

The Forgive Barbecue in Beijing, is, according to one of the employees, "A bridge to connect hearing-impaired people with other people." The entire staff is deaf. Read more in the Inquisitor here.

Brewery wants to make great beer — and serve the deaf community

Three Gallaudet University graduates opened a brewery this fall in a DC suburb just 4 miles from the school. Streetcar 82 in Hyattsville, Maryland gives "the deaf and hard of hearing a place to work and unwind." The Washington Post offers a profile here. Below is a video telling how they came up with the name.

Nursing Home Must Pay for Hanging up on Deaf Woman

New Jersey state officials are fining a nursing home $2500 after a worker repeatedly hung up on a deaf social worker. Nicole Perkins needed to discuss a client with Atrium Post Acute Care in Wayne, New Jersey. Attorney General Gurbir Grewal released a statement saying:

photo from Atrium Post Acute Care 

This case should serve as a message to healthcare facilities and other businesses around the state that we are serious about promoting and protecting the rights of persons with disabilities,” “This was a troubling case because there simply is no excuse for a nursing home – of all places – to repeatedly refuse to accept a telephone call from an operator calling on behalf of a deaf person. We are committed to enforcing the LAD, our nation’s oldest and most comprehensive civil rights law, and we are committed to holding accountable those who violate it. This was a troubling case because there simply is no excuse for a nursing home – of all places – to repeatedly refuse to accept a telephone call from an operator calling on behalf of a deaf person,” Grewal said in a statement.

The nursing home will lose $10,000 more if it fails to follow the Attorney General's requirements. Read more here.

Deaf HS Football Player in LA

A Los Angeles high school football player says being deaf hasn't held him back from contributing to his team. Desis Gonzales Jr. plays for San Gorgonio High School and NBC-4 has more on his story in this video report.

Wearable Tech to Listen to Live Music

A company called Not Impossible Labs says it has come up with a new wearable technology that "allows deaf and hearing users alike to experience musical vibrations through their skin for a true 'surround body' experience." The tech is called Music: Not Impossible and it works directly with a sound system. Read more details here.

Deaf students struggle with getting last minute interpreters

Students at one Texas school are having problems getting interpreters when they need them. The student paper at the University of Texas at Austin quotes a communication sciences and disorders major as saying, “A few weeks ago, my professor made last-minute office hours. On the same day, he said the review session would be moved back an hour. I can’t do anything about that. I knew that if I submitted a request, I would not get (an interpreter).” Read the full story here.

The Hoops Coach and his Viral ASL Video

A viral video of the basketball team for the Mississippi School for the Deaf has become an educational moment for those who don't know ASL.

The Downsides and Challenges of Cochlear Implants

An opinion piece in the New York Times takes on the issue of cochlear implants. Writing professor Sara Novic cautions:

Expecting an implant to cure deafness or magically generate speech is to await the moment the hammer will fly out of one’s hand and build a house on its own. The value of the tool lies only in the skill of its user, and for the cochlear implant user, that skill is learned with much effort. To suggest otherwise is to give a disingenuous prognosis to potential patients and their parents, and discounts the hard work successful C.I. users do to communicate in a way the hearing world deems acceptable.

Read her article here.

A Signed Bedtime Story Goes Viral

CBeebies Bedtime Story is a BBC show where a celebrity reads a children's bedtime story. A recent episode got extra attention because the celebrity, Catastrophe's Rob Delaney, signed in Makaton his story a week ago Friday. Delaney read aloud and signed Ten in a Bed by Penny Dale, becoming the first reader to do so. It caught the attention of six-year-old Tom McCartney. Watch Tom's reaction below in a video that went viral:



Delaney wanted to honor his son by telling bedtime story in Makaton, which is a variation of BSL (British Sign Language) combining signs and symbols Delaney learned Makaton in order to communication with his son, Henry, who couldn't speak and died last January at the age of two.

Pizza by the Deaf

San Francisco's Mozzeria restaurant is entirely owned and operated by people who are deaf. CBS News spoke with the owners, Melody and Russell Stein. They opened it in 2011.

Ocasio-Cortez is Captioning Her Instagram Posts for You

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez 

The youngest woman ever to be elected to the US Congress says she is captioning her Instagram stories for the Deaf community. “Advocates for the deaf community hit me up to connect me with tools (i.e. Clipomatic) to better serve all of us. I now caption all my IG stories so our deaf brothers and sisters can follow along too,” representative-elect Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez wrote on Twitter.

Advocates for the deaf community hit me up to connect me with tools (i.e. Clipomatic) to better serve all of us.

Thanks to them, I now caption all my IG stories so our deaf brothers and sisters can follow along too. https://t.co/WhwNNgSeHy

— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@Ocasio2018) November 16, 2018

Helen Keller reinstated into Texas school curriculum

We recently told you about possible changes to the Texas school curriculum—including dropping historical figures like Helen Keller. After an outcry, that plan has been dropped. The Texas State Board of Education "backed restoring disability rights advocate Helen Keller to the state's third-grade social studies curriculum standards." Read more about what happened in the Texas Tribune here.

Deaf Football Team tries something new

The Alabama School for the Deaf football team is trying something new—they are playing with the Alabama School for the Blind. WIAT-TV has a video report on the Silent Warriors.

Deaf State House candidate Loses Race

Chris Haulmark

A Ωlegislative candidate in Kansas lost his race. Republican John Toplikar beat out Chris Haulmark—who would have become the first deaf legislator in the U.S. But Haulmark lost party support when he was accused by multiple women of being emotionally abusive. Read more about the allegations here.

Researchers: Sign offers insights not provided by spoken language

Researchers say, "Sign languages can help reveal hidden aspects of the logical structure of spoken language, but they also highlight its limitations because speech lacks the rich iconic resources that sign language uses on top of its sophisticated grammar." The study comes out of New York University and France's National Center for Scientific Research. It's published in the journal Theoretical Linguistics. Read details on the study here.

Kitty O'Neil Dies

Professional stuntwoman Kitty O'Neil has died at the age of 72. Among other things, the deaf daredevil set a record for land speed by a female driver in 1976. It was in Oregon's Alvord Desert that Kitty hit 512 miles per hour.

Childhood diseases left her deaf and nearly killed her. She became a champion diver at a young age. Her work later as a Hollywood stuntwoman was featured in TV shows like Quincy, Baretta and The Bionic Woman along with movies like Smokey and the Bandit, The Blues Brothers and Airport '77. 

She set a record for the highest stunt fall by a woman (105 feet).  She has held as many as 22 speed records on land and water.

A movie was made about her life in 1979 titled Silent Victory: The Kitty O'Neil Story.  She died Nov. 2, 2018 from pneumonia. Read more about her amazing life in a Washington Post article here.

Below is a video report on Kitty from the Midco Sports Network put together in 2015.

NYT advocates for Implants in Health article

A controversial New York pediatric audiology consultant and speech-language pathologist is quoted in the New York Times as saying, “Children identified with hearing loss at birth and fitted with technology in the first weeks of life blend in so well with everyone else that people don’t realize there are so many deaf children." Jane R. Madell claims, “Eighty-five percent of such children are successfully mainstreamed.” That's a figure that many would dispute. She helped produce a documentary about it called “The Listening Project.” Read more of the New York Times article here. Don't miss the comment section. There are opinions from a wide variety of people including a professor of Deaf education at Boston University. He writes:

This article talks about cochlear implants as a panacea, without acknowledging the tremendous risk that a child will not learn a spoken language at all. I am disappointed that the Times would publish something so misleading.

But other commenters defend the article and Madell's perspective. Below is a trailer for the documentary.