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December 28, 2007
Hearing Aid Store Bailed On Us
Customers of Family Hearing Aid Centers of Florida Inc. say they have been left in limbo without their merchandise when local stores suddenly closed after the company filed for bankruptcy protection.
"We've had a lot of complaints - seven calls I've logged," said Tina West, manager of the Better Business Council, which is affiliated with the Manatee Chamber of Commerce.
She said chamber colleagues also have been fielding other complaint calls.
Posted @ 8:55 AM
Silencing The Noisy Mind
The clamor that Sampson Parsons heard inside his head every waking hour for 15 years sounded like a metal spoon banging against a cookie sheet.
"It was gruesome," said Parsons, 35. "I was waiting to die. If I gave it enough thought, I couldn't prove I was not in hell."
Medically, what he was experiencing was a terrible case of a common condition known as tinnitus, hearing sounds such as hissing or whistling when there is no external source for the noise.
The phantom noises were so dreadfully real and relentless that when he learned of a highly experimental treatment that entailed removing part of the skull, he eagerly signed up. And others have done the same.
Posted @ 8:53 AM
Bellevue Woman Advocates for Deaf Community
Bellevue resident Betty Timon knows what it's like to watch a movie or television show and not understand a thing.
It's not because of a confusing plot or storyline. She's deaf and captioning isn't always available.
This personal understanding of the hardships that deaf and hard of hearing people face has lead Timon to dedicate much of her time to making life better for them.
Posted @ 8:52 AM
Video relay center for the deaf planned for Frederick County
Video relay call centers planned for Frederick and Baltimore counties will offer another communication alternative for people who are deaf and hard of hearing.
Viable Inc., a provider of video relay services for deaf and hard of hearing people, recently opened a call center in Ellicott City, which is a few miles from the Columbia campus of the Maryland School for the Deaf.
Viable Relay Services plans to open a center in Frederick County in early 2008. The new center will employ 12 people initially.
Posted @ 8:51 AM
Deaf by Design
In October 2004, Carina Dennis published an article in the journal Nature telling the story of a couple identified pseudonymously as John and Karen. The two of them were deaf, and they wished to take advantage of genetic screening to deliberately conceive a deaf child.[1] Their desire to create a child that would inherit their disability raised a number of interesting questions, which must have promptly been forgotten, since I just heard about all this today.
Those questions are raised again in an article published a few days ago in the Sunday Times of London, under the headline “Deaf demand right to designer deaf children.” A bill currently making its way through the House of Lords, the Human Tissue and Embryos Bill, would, if passed, make it illegal for parents in the U.K. to deliberately select for artificial insemination an embryo with a genetic abnormality if other, healthier embryos exist.
Posted @ 8:49 AM
Deaf foster children find a home closer to home
He has bounced from foster home to foster home and state to state over the past decade, searching for a permanent place to lead a normal life.
Such has been the plight of deaf children with emotional or psychological scars who are part of San Diego County's foster care system.
But that same boy is now 17 and an aspiring artist who attends high school and lives in a spacious house tucked in a residential neighborhood in Chula Vista, closer to relatives and friends he had long forgotten.
Posted @ 8:47 AM
Interpreting services for deaf now available here
A new office for walk-in, onsite interpreting services to help individuals who are deaf or hard of hearing is now open in Murfreesboro.
The site marks the fourth satellite office for the League for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing, a not-for-profit agency based in Nashville. The Rutherford County office is located at the Linebaugh Public Library, Second Floor Board Room, 105 West Vine.
The office is open each Wednesday from 3:30-7:30 p.m. No appointments for interpreting services are necessary.
Posted @ 8:45 AM
Court affirms real-time captioning for 2nd deaf student
The school district last week lost a second battle in its fight to keep from providing a real-time captioning service for two deaf students at Glendora High School.
A state judge ordered the Glendora Unified School District to begin offering the service to Victor Solorzano, 15. In May, Victor's sister Samantha, 17, won her own case against the district, which dropped its appeal of that decision in October.
The two siblings say they need the service - in which an aide rapidly transcribes class discussion onto a laptop seen by the captioning user.
Posted @ 8:45 AM
School for the Deaf and the Blind president retiring
The president of the South Carolina School for the Deaf and the Blind is receiving accolades from colleagues, students and others as she prepares to retire next week.
Sheila Breitweiser plans to spend more time with her family.
"She said she would like to make the school the best of its kind in the country, and she's done that," said Norman Pulliam, the former board member who hired Breitweiser in 1996. The school "under 11 years of her leadership is pretty much considered the top school of its kind in this country."
Posted @ 8:44 AM
Sign of the season
Two hands moved with every spoken word as one congregation member watched intently on the day’s service.
Bradley Price, a deaf member of St. Bartholomew’s Church in Louisbourg, is a regular fixture at the church’s Sunday services. One day each month, Price is able to watch the hands of interpreter Wendy MacDonald of Sydney, as she signs the entire service including its choir songs.
“It was beautiful — seeing it in sign — the music was just beautiful, it made everything come to life for me and made me feel part of the service,” said Price as interpreted through MacDonald.
Posted @ 8:42 AM
Parents taught new Ole Miss coach Nutt lessons that led to his success
Decades before he would hear thundering cheers in college football, Houston Nutt's life was shaped by silence.
Mississippi's new coach learned most of the principles he would use in the profession whiling away the hours of his childhood at the Arkansas School for the Deaf, where his parents taught.
He learned communication, perseverance, compassion and the value of hard work as he watched his father, Houston, and mother, Emogene, dedicate themselves to improve the lives of deaf children.
Posted @ 8:41 AM
Schools’ deaf interpreter standards to change
A deaf student’s parents sometimes have a difficult time finding a high-quality interpreter in West Virginia.
Officials from two state agencies who work with deaf and hard of hearing students realize a sea change is on the way, and one that’s expected to make it even more difficult to nail down a qualified interpreter who’s up to par.
By July, state education officials will require that school interpreters be graded on their skill level. The state Board of Education agreed that interpreters must reach a score of 3.0 on the Educational Interpreter Performance Assessment (EIPA) by July 1. Skill levels on the EIPA range from zero to 5.
Posted @ 8:40 AM
Students find sign language skills useful
American Sign Language is, by some estimations, the third-most spoken language in the United States. And students in Montville High School's ASL classes have found multiple opportunities to use their skills.
more stories like this
Mary Perkins, a senior, said she helped translate for a deaf couple who frequented the restaurant she used to work at, using finger spelling when she didn't know the signs for a food. Senior Brooke Forbes said she and another student translated for a parent who was deaf at a back-to-school night.
Posted @ 8:38 AM
New thumb comes with new language for a deaf 4-year-old girl
The halls leading to the children's classrooms of the Western Pennsylvania School for the Deaf in Edgewood are adorned with the artwork of youngsters. Tiny paper hands, the colorful outlines traced in crayon and cut with scissors, bear the carefully scrawled names of the children who created them.
The hands speak to you.
Dr. Nancy Benham, coordinator for the parent-infant program at the school, walks down a hall into the classroom where her 4-year-old daughter, Grace, is learning American Sign Language.
Posted @ 8:37 AM
Award given to Williamsburg filmmakers
Filmmaker Diane K. Garey and her husband, Lawrence R. Hott, will receive one of 13 Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University 2008 Awards for broadcast journalism in January.
Their film "Through Deaf Eyes" was one of 510 submitted for consideration.
"We were very surprised," she said. The film made for the Public Broadcasting System was submitted by public television for the award.
Posted @ 8:36 AM
Deaf community still at risk
The State Member for Gympie, David Gibson MP, is calling on Anna Bligh to go further in protecting all Deaf Queenslanders with a proposal to financially assist the hearing impaired purchase special smoke alarms.
"We had the Government saying back in October that "Smoke alarms are an important life saving initiative, and the Government has recognised the needs of the hearing-impaired community by developing this proposal." quoted Mr Gibson.
Posted @ 8:35 AM
Signing up to aid deaf
Emergency services are helping to break down the barriers experienced by members of the deaf community on Teesside.
Police, ambulance and firefighters have combined forces in a bid to boost the service they provide to people with impaired hearing.
Posters and leaflets which bear the alphabet and simple messages in sign language will be issued to staff and displayed in custody and reception areas.
Posted @ 8:34 AM
$1.2 Million RIT/NTID Entrepreneurial Scholarship Announced
A Florida-based charity that provides educational opportunities to the disadvantaged or disabled has donated $600,000 for deaf and hard-of-hearing Rochester Institute of Technology students eager to become entrepreneurs.
The Johnson Scholarship Foundation’s Endowed Scholarship for Innovation & Entrepreneurship will annually award $5,000 to 12 RIT students studying entrepreneurship and who receive support services through RIT’s National Technical Institute for the Deaf.
Posted @ 8:33 AM
Children of deaf parents honored at party
Six children were honored Thursday at a party with meals and gifts for all the things they've done to help their deaf parents.
Thursday's party ---- at the Sizzlers restaurant in Escondido ---- was sponsored by Signs of Silence.
The San Marcos-based nonprofit advocacy group for the deaf and hearing impaired paid for the event with a $1,000 donation from The Giving Challenge, a national nonprofit that doles out money to groups helping other people in exchange for a videotape of the experience for its Web site.
Posted @ 8:32 AM
Sound advocate pioneers new health care approach
Sheri Byrne-Haber has a winning streak any lawyer would envy.
Since she launched a program in 2004 challenging health insurers' denials of a device that allows the deaf to hear, the East Palo Alto-based attorney has won every one of the 325 cases now completed. Hundreds more appeals are in the works, and the odds aren't in the insurance companies' favor.
When she and her clients prevail, however, Byrne-Haber noted they don't get a dime in reparation. All her clients get is the ability to hear.
Posted @ 8:31 AM
Woman leaves millions to university for the deaf
Gallaudet University in Washington, D.C., has received more than six million dollars from a Fredericksburg woman who left the bulk of her estate to the university for the deaf and hard of hearing.
Virginia May Binns, a bacteriologist, was 89 when she died last year.
The money will be used to help fund a new language and communication center at the school.
Posted @ 8:30 AM
December 17, 2007
An Earful About Hearing
If your hearing isn't as good as it used to be, you may be thinking about getting a hearing aid.
Then again, there's a good chance you can't be bothered, even though you find yourself cranking up the volume on the TV set or asking a friend sitting next to you to speak up.
Hearing loss affects more than 28 million Americans. With baby boomers starting to turn 60 last year, that number is expected to nearly double by 2030, according to the Hearing Loss Association of America. The likelihood of losing your hearing increases as you get older, with up to one in three people older than 65 having some kind of hearing loss, according to the association.
Although 95 percent of Americans with a hearing loss can be successfully treated with hearing aids, only 22 percent (or 6.35 million individuals) now use hearing aids.
Posted @ 9:54 PM
Cholesterol Fine Tunes Hearing
Levels of cholesterol in the membranes of hair cells in the inner ear can affect your hearing, said a consortium of researchers from Baylor College of Medicine, Rice University and Purdue University in a report in today’s print edition of The Journal of Biological Chemistry.
Dr. William Brownell, professor of otolaryngology at BCM and his colleagues, said that the amount of cholesterol in the outer hair cell membrane found in the inner ear can affect hearing.
“We’ve known for a long time that cholesterol is lower in the outer hair cell membranes than in the other cells of the body,” said Brownell, senior author of the report “What we didn’t know was the relationship it had to hearing.”
Posted @ 9:52 PM
Opening Up a World of Sound
When 1-year-old Gregory Moeller heard sound for the first time last month, he furrowed his blond eyebrows in puzzlement. Then he made a series of babbling sounds.
"He's hearing something,'' said Annie Vranesic, a pediatric audiologist at the Let Them Hear Foundation in East Palo Alto.
Two weeks earlier, Gregory had received cochlear implants, sophisticated devices enabling the deaf boy to hear the same sounds as everyone else, albeit in a different tone. During this visit, Vranesic turned on one of the surgically implanted devices.
Posted @ 9:51 PM
Caravan to carry gifts to Florida School for the Deaf and Blind
When Norma Rea of Ponte Vedra Beach learned that some children at The Florida School for the Deaf and the Blind didn't have coats for the winter, she decided to do something about it.
An e-mail from a friend who was involved in a campaign to get donations of clothing for the St. Augustine school asked Rea to check her daughters' closets to see if they had any coats or jackets they had outgrown.
Rea decided not to stop there.
Posted @ 9:47 PM
Interpreters for the deaf give justice a voice
Justice may be blind, but it isn’t deaf.
Gary Cacciatore of Colorado Sign Language Services and other certified sign language interpreters make sure of that.
For more than 10 years, Cacciatore has provided sign language services for defendants and jurors in the 4th Judicial District.
Much like witnesses who get sworn in, interpreters take courtroom oaths to be truthful. They are paid by the state, which also funds language interpreters for non-Englishspeaking defendants.
Posted @ 9:43 PM
Deaf students sign gift lists to Santa
With eyes glowing, and genuinely bouncing with excitement, a collection of youngsters who can't hear Santa's booming "ho, ho, ho" climbed on the old elf's lap and silently shared their Christmas wishes.
The younsters are students of Butte County Office of Education's deaf and hard-of-hearing, special-ed classes in Durham, where they had a chance Wednesday to "sign" their lists to Santa's surrogate, Jerry Kaminski of Magalia. Kaminski is also deaf and signs.
Nicole Happich-Bowhall, who teaches in the Durham-based program, said this is the first time a signing Santa has come to the school.
Posted @ 9:40 PM
Technology removes ‘dis’ from ability
Bill Johnson is deaf, as were both his parents and many relatives. In the 1940s and ’50s, as Johnson was growing up in Iowa, family members had no easy way to give advance notice when they wished to visit a deaf relative.
They just piled into the car and drove to the residence.
If the relative wasn’t home, they left a note in the box that all deaf families kept outside their homes and drove back.
Posted @ 9:39 PM
VCC offers free sign language sessions to help families communicate
Family members who want to communicate better
with a deaf adult relative can learn the skills and subtle body language of
American Sign Language (ASL) at Vancouver Community College for free. The
course will be offered on Wednesday evenings for 15 weeks, beginning Jan. 16.
Vincent Chauvet, VCC department head of ASL and deaf studies, says fully
90 per cent of adults with deaf children never learn to sign. As children
become adults and families become larger, the need for a course designed
specifically to help families improve communication becomes greater.
Posted @ 9:38 PM
Texas School for the Deaf dresses Scarbrough windows
Want a unique opportunity to enjoy some holiday window-gazing while learning something about the young deaf artists who attend Texas School for the Deaf, as well as about their unique culture and the distinguished history of their school? Visit the Scarbrough Building at Sixth Street and Congress Avenue.
Through Jan. 12, the Scarbrough windows are adorned with large 4-foot-by-8-foot holiday multimedia posters depicting still photos of students signing holiday carols, hanging photo montages and elementary student “holiday hand” mobiles. Reflecting the technology that the school is known for, large flat-screen TVs bring to life the work of video technology and digital graphics students teamed up with students studying American Sign Language as a foreign language in a compilation of movies and animated holiday sequences.
Posted @ 9:38 PM
Viable Brings on Carla Mathers as Staff Attorney
Viable Inc. welcomes Carla Mathers, Esq. to the company as its corporate legal counsel. Viable develops and provides relay service technologies, and Mathers will represent Viable on regulatory issues and counsel on in-house matters.
Mathers comes from 14 years in private practice in College Park, Md., where she was a senior associate litigating primarily employment cases. Among her areas of legal expertise are employment law, contracts and Americans with Disabilities Act compliance. She has represented deaf and hard of hearing clients in lawsuits regarding access to interpreting and telecommunications services.
Posted @ 9:37 PM
A musical miracle: the deaf flautists of Sivas
Against all odds a group of deaf students, under the baton of teacher Umut Yaymak, have formed a flute ensemble.
Students at the Buruciye Primary School for the Hearing Impaired in Sivas are getting flute lessons with the help of a special technique developed by Yaymak.
Although actually on the staff of the Ahmet Kutsi Tecer Primary School, Yaymak was assigned to Buruciye to give extra lessons there. He developed an exclusive system for the deaf students, teaching them notes and technique. He also plans to teach them other instruments such as the organ and bağlama.
Posted @ 9:36 PM
Woman killed in Moreno Valley fire remembered for smile
Several hundred people gathered Saturday to honor Melissa Phoenix, one of two women who died in a mobile home fire Dec. 2 in Moreno Valley.
Friends and family recalled her inclination to take care of everyone and her hunger to learn, both in her classes for deaf students and in mainstream classes.
"It was not enough to learn signs. She wanted to learn how to spell the words in English as well, and even in Spanish," her uncle, Richard Langton, said during the service at the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints on Jackson Street in Riverside.
Posted @ 9:34 PM
December 6, 2007
Everything You Need to Know about Cell Phones and Digital Hearing Aids
Today, almost everyone has a cell phone - young and old - and it can be a challenge for users of digital hearing aids to know how to handle their phones properly. Issues such as feedback and distortion can arise, as can conflicts between cell phone and hearing aid technology, and the hearing aid user may be tempted to throw both the hearing aids and the cell phone out the window. But the truth is that cell phone and hearing aid technology can coexist without major problems - it just takes a little research.
Posted @ 3:12 PM