Wheel of Fortune appearance

Lori is deaf and Lorraine has been her friend and interpreter for more than 50 years. They appeared together recent on Wheel of Fortune—and won some money!

Controversy over Terp at Bball Game

The interpreter for a deaf basketball player in Culver, Indiana was ordered by a referee to not stand beside of the coach. It's something she has done during every other game. The IndyStar has the story here.

"Our sign language romance"

The BBC Arabic followed a deaf couple from Lebanon as they prepared for their wedding.

Implant just in time for Wedding

A Baltimore teacher got a cochlear implant to restore his hearing last week—just in time for his wedding. David Alianiello works with deaf students in Baltimore's public school system. He told People Magazine, "It was the first time I had ever heard clapping. It was fun to be able to experience the different sounds." Read the full story here or watch a video from WBAL-TV below.

Implant Stolen

A mother had part of her son's cochlear implant stolen. It was inside Kimberly Blodgett's purse when she dropped off her children at daycare. KFOR-TV has a video report.

Community Learns Sign for 2-year-old girl

A deaf toddler in Massachusetts got a wonderful gift from her community. CBS News has a video report. (CBS did not provide captions).

Deaf baristas: Starbucks discriminated against us

Two deaf baristas are suing Starbucks, claiming discrimination. They say the manager at the store in Seattle where they worked put them in positions for long hours that were especially difficult for deaf workers and that they were excluded from conversations with other employees, among other things. KIRO-TV has a video report below. There is a captioned video here.

City Council Drops Use of Terps at Meetings

If you live in Cleveland, your City Council meetings will not include sign-language interpreters anymore. The Council thinks it's too expensive, according to a letter one of the members sent to a man who is hard of hearing and had requested interpreters. The city provided them for a while, but the letter to Rico Dancy now offers him the use of headphones instead. Read the full story at Cleveland.com here.

Mom Remembers Daughter

A video posted on Facebook shows a deaf mom with dementia remembering her daughter. Watch it here.

Mother Gets ASL Lesson After Using the Wrong Signs

A mother wanted to teach her one-year-old child some sign language. She shares on Reddit how she accidentally taught her daughter some wrong signs. Fortunately, two deaf women saw them trying to sign in a restaurant and they graciously showed the mother the correct way to sign the words. Read the story here. (This is a corrected link. The originally posted link was broken) Some of the comments of other mistaken attempts at signing are pretty funny, causing the discussion thread to go viral.

How Murder Shattered a Quiet College Campus

A murder took place during the year 2000 at Gallaudet University in Washington, DC. An episode of People Magazine Investigates is dedicated to the crime. "The Sound of Silence" will air Monday at 10 pm, Eastern on Investigation Discovery. An article published by the magazine this weekend describes the crime that shook the campus. You can read it here.

The missing sign from the Super Bowl

Did you see the national anthem signed by Aarron Loggins during the Super Bowl? You didn't if you were watching the CBS broadcast of the game. That's because the network only showed Loggins for a second at the end of America the Beautiful. A video posted by the National Association of the Deaf of Loggins from the Super Bowl has been viewed more than one-and-a-half million times on Facebook. Watch it yourself here. Loggins earned a degree from Gallaudet University. Below is a video of Loggins during his Atlanta visit.

Two New Apps Related to Hearing

Google has two new Android apps aimed at the deaf and hard of hearing. Live Transcribe is a speech-to-text app that works in real time and Sound Amplifier does what you would expect it to do based on the name—it makes sounds louder. The user with hearing loss puts on a set of headphones and can adjust the app's settings for voice clarity, decreasing the ambient noise, etc. Both apps will be available for free in the Google Play store. There are some limitations though. Sound Amplifier only works on phones with Android 9 Pie and requires an internet connection while Live Transcribe will only be installed on Google’s Pixel 3 smartphones.

Apple offers some help as well: VoiceOver is a free text reader built into iOS. Assistive Touch has vibrations and light flashes to alert users to incoming calls. Of course, FaceTime is used by many members of the deaf community.

 Accessibility advocates say the next step for these smartphone tools is to make them coordinate with features like location so that, when you set your phone to a certain ambient noise level at a particular location, the phone will automatically use those setting when you go there again.

Below is a video showing how Live Transcribe works. Read a review of the apps at The Verge here.

Security guard attacked by deaf Uber driver

A Houston security guard is recovering after being attacked by a deaf Uber driver. The confrontation was caught on camera. ABC-13 has a video report. For captioning, go here.

America's First Female Deaf Mayor

Amanda Folendorf became the mayor of Angels Camp, California just a year ago. The little town is located east of San Francisco. Amanda was born with a rare birth defect called diaphragmatic hernia. The medications she had to take as a baby ultimately damaged her hearing. Folendorf pick up some low-frequency noises and has some skill at reading lips. But the former Miss Deaf California says a team of sign language interpreters helps her execute her duties as mayor. “Hearing impaired and disability, I’m trying to throw that label out. We’re no different than anyone else; we just can’t hear," Folendorf told KOVR-TV (CBS-13) when she first came into office. Here's a video report from CBS-13 that aired a year ago when she first took office.

Gallaudet's Motion Light Lab

The PBS Newshour profiles Melissa Malzkuhn and her work at Gallaudet's Motion Light Lab in the video below. Malzkuhn says her "early access to sign language allowed her to connect with humanity."

Samantha Bee on Police and the Deaf community

Nyle DiMarco joined comedian Samantha Bee for a section of her show about the difficulties faced by the deaf when they encounter law enforcement.

City settles Captioning Lawsuit

Key West, Florida has agreed to add captioning to its meetings—and pay $10k to settled a lawsuit. Eddie Sierra, who is deaf, filed the suit, saying the failure to include captioning is an ADA violation. Read more on the story in the Miami Herald.