Meet two Amazon Deaf employees

Two Deaf employees are thriving at an Amazon facility in Albany, according to an article in the Times-Union. One is from Brazil and one is from the Phillipines. They are among the half dozen deaf employees at the company’s Schodack facility. Read more here.

A unique business triangle in DC

Branches of two giant corporations and a local restaurant are all cleverly designed to serve the large, local deaf community. Read more in The Hill here.

Deaf-owned Restaurant Closes

Mozzeria owners when it opened in 2011 

In November of 2011, DeafNewsToday told you about the opening of a new pizza restaurant in San Francisco that would take place the following month. The owners are deaf, as are many of the wait staff and cooks. Since then, Mozzeria, a name combining mozzarella cheese and pizzeria, has opened in several other locations. But owners Melody and Russell Stein were forced to close the Mission district location last week. Mozzeria was San Francisco’s first and only Deaf-owned-and-operated restaurant. The daughter of hearing parents, Melody Stein attended the California School for the Deaf in Fremont, while Russ Stein grew up in New York City as part of a deaf family. They met at Gallaudet University where they studied Business Administration. Melody's father operated restaurants in Hong Kong where she was born, has studied Hospitality Management and took cooking classes in Italy. The restaurant became a favorite of anyone in the area studying ASL and certainly of those in Deaf Culture. Mozzeria food truck will still be in operation for private events and may be used for a swing up and down the West Coast. KQED radio has more on the closure here.

Coffee Shop Chain in South Africa Hires mostly Deaf workers

I Love Coffee is a chain of cafés in South Africa. Founder Gary Hopkins says he was moved to staff the shops mainly with Deaf and hard-of-hearing employees because "sign language isn’t really recognised as a language in South Africa, and that has led to great levels of unemployment." Read the full story here or watch the video below:

I’m deaf, and this is what happens when I get on a Zoom call

Deaf product designer Quinn Keast says working from home is a bonus for him--except when his Sourcegraph team chooses to connect through video. He writes:   

Lip-reading doesn’t work well over video, because lip-reading relies on a whole lot more visual information than just the lips, and video calls don’t carry the full visual and emotional bandwidth needed to read lips easily. So instead, I use a series of hacks or built-in tools to help me out by providing real-time speech-to-text. 

 

Read the full story about what the team did to try to accommodate Quinn here.

Tech firm settles lawsuit over refusing to interview Deaf worker

A New Jersey company will pay $77,500 to settle a lawsuit over its treatment of a prospective deaf employee. Conduent Business Services refused to even interview the qualified deaf applicant once it discovered a sign language interpreter would be needed. The company has now agreed to change its reasonable accommodation policy and offer ADA training to its employees. Read more about the settlement here.

CNBC profiles a Boston Terp

Jon Urquhart is a CODA who grew up with a deaf-blind father. He ultimately became a sign language interpreter as an adult and now a TikTok creator. CNBC profiled him, focusing on how Jon survives financially on $60K in Boston.

Profile of a School Counselor

Cookie Brand explains in this video from the National Deaf Center on Postsecondary Outcomes, how she became a school counselor at the Kerugoya School for the Deaf in Kenya.

New Zoom Accessibility options

Zoom added some accessibility options today to its video-conference software that will help ASL interpreters. Users can now pin and spotlight multiple video screens at a time--that way someone signing can be pinned alongside the speaker so they are always in view. In the grid view, users can rearrange video windows so that the interpreter is on the screen wherever they want to see them. Jen Hill explains how to use the features in this video. 

Network to Promote Deaf-Led Sign Language Research

Gallaudet University is looking for ways to promote Deaf-led research and innovation in sign language technology. The school is launching a professional network to support this type of research. The network is called CREST, which stands for Cultivating Research and Equity in Sign-related Technology. The National Science Foundation is providing funding and founded by Melissa Malzkuhn, who started Gallaudet's Motion Light Lab, and Lorna Quandt, the lab's science director. Quandt said in a press release:

There is new research coming out every day in this field. Now, with CREST, we have the opportunity to bring together top researchers and resources from across the world, not only to accelerate cutting-edge technologies for the broader deaf community but most importantly to ensure they are developed authentically from the start with deaf input and representation.

Read more about it here.

DC’s first Deaf-owned-and-operated restaurant opens

The opening of a Washington, DC location for Mozzeria Pizza has created some buzz in the nation's capital.  WDCW-TV has a video report below or read the story here.

Deaf-owned pizzeria opens near Gally

The deaf-owned pizzeria Mozzeria, is opening a location in Washington, D.C. this weekend. The new outlet will be close to the campus of Gallaudet University. Mozzeria founders Melody and Russ Stein met while they were students at Gallaudet.

Protecting the Deaf Community from Investment Scams

This SEC (Securities and Exchange Commission) video shows how a fraud takes place from the point of view of a man from the deaf and hard or hearing community who was defrauded by someone they thought they could trust. While the names and people are made up, the story demonstrates how even the most responsible investors can be victims when they put their guard down.

MI company to pay $25K for ADA violations

A Michigan company has agreed to pay $25,000 to settle a federal disability discrimination lawsuit as well as ADA training and reports to the EEOC. The EEOC's lawsuit said Powerlink Facilities Management Services, instead of providing captioning in its orientation videos, didn't allow a deaf employee to begin work for several months. The failure to provide reasonable accommodations was an ADA violation. Read more details from the EEOC here.

Starbucks to open 1st signing store in Japan

image from Starbucks.com

Starbucks Coffee is opening its first store in Japan with baristas who know sign language. The store will open on Saturday in Kunitachi, a city in the western part of Tokyo. Nearly the entire staff of 25 is deaf. This will be the fifth "signing store" for the company Others are located in Malaysia, the US and China. Read more here.

ADA law & wearing a mask in a business

Does ADA law require businesses to allow people into stories if the customer has a disability? Some experts say the answer is 'no.' KMIR-TV in Palm Springs has a video report below or read the story here.

What deaf truckers have to fear from the Trump administration

The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration is about to issue a ruling that could prevent deaf and hard-of-hearing commercial truck drivers from working. The National Association for the Deaf filed a petition this year arguing that the hearing tests are not a valid requirement for a commercial driver's license. Sara Novic filed an opinion piece with CNN about the issue which you can read here.

A struggle at Trader Joe's

Good Morning America spoke with Matthew Simmons, a Trader Joe's cashier in Vancouver, Washington about the difficulties he faces communicating with customers--especially with everyone wearing masks. "I rely heavily on using my lip-reading skills so customers wearing facial coverings is a problem for me," Simmons said. Read the full story here.

College student makes masks for the deaf

Ashley Lawrence is studying education for the deaf and hard of hearing at Eastern Kentucky University and has come up with a way to help the community during the Coronavirus outbreak. She tells LEX-18:

We're trying different things to for people with cochlear implants and hearing aids if they can't wrap around the ears. We're making some that have around the head and around the neck. For anyone who uses speech reading, lip reading, anybody like that. And people who are profoundly deaf who use ASL as their primary mode of communication. ASL is very big on facial expressions and it is part of the grammar.

Read more here.

Deaf face uphill battle when searching for work

"Many deaf individuals with higher education often aren’t given the same opportunity to get supervisory experience as their hearing peers, which can put them behind hearing job candidates." Read more about the difficulty the deaf face when searching for work in the Daily Herald here.