Put Self-Advocacy on your New Year's Resolutions List.

Tonight is the night when we all make our New Year's Resolutions for the year of 2007. I urge you to make your resolutions more meaningful by adding self-advocacy into your resolutions in regards to ASL, captioning, education, interpreting, politics, and social justice.

Deaf School Competition Offer Thousands of Dollars in Scholarships.

What deaf high school competition has an opportunity to win $2,000 and two $1,000 scholarships to the student's choice of either National Technical Institute for the Deaf or Gallaudet University?

It's definitely not sports. It could be the Spelling Bee competition but I believe only the state of Illinois does that and they give $100 savings bond. You would think Gallaudet's Academic Bowl would have scholarship prizes but nope. It's the Deaf Teen America in its 9th year being hosted at Texas School for the Deaf during the dates of March 21st to 25th, 2007

Based on the pictures of past Deaf Teen America, it seems that there are only 10/12 schools in the competition. This is a stunning low number to me because of the amazing scholarship awards that they offer.

Now is the time to get your school, alma mater, or child involved with this and grab the scholarships. To get information packet - contact Jennifer Campero by e-mail at jennifer.campero@tsd.state.tx.us or by phone at (512) 462-5461.

Employment at Deaf Schools.

This quote from an article regarding the crisis at Mississippi School for the Deaf is just wrong.

Dr. Bounds said late Tuesday that there are indeed teachers at the school who are not proficient at signing, but he said the problem is limited to the School for the Deaf. He says the whole state is dealing with an overall shortage of certified teachers.

I may be incorrect but I believe that there are sufficient number of certified teachers with proficient signing skills. Its just a matter of recruiting and posting their employment at outside sources. I applaud American, Colorado, Eastern North Carolina, Hawaii, Learning Center, Louisiana, Rhode Island, and Rochester schools for the Deaf for just doing that through hiredeaf, deafweekly, and deafdigest.

The schools for the deaf also need to establish a pipeline to continuously receive certified signing teachers with colleges and universities that offers deaf education. The two leading schools that constantly graduates proficient signing teachers of the deaf are Gallaudet University and McDaniel College - contact them!

NFL Network to be Captioned!

Les Carpenter of the Washington Post wrote an article today on the new NFL Network.

I contacted Les, to let him know that he missed out an angle on the NFL Network. The new network is not captioned and is missing out on millions of deaf and hard of hearing audience members.

Within hours, I've gotten a response from Les and the PR Director of the NFL Network stating, "Tell him/her our games, pregame and postgame show and all our Replayed games are now closed captioned! And by the start of 2007 season the entire network will be!"

Blind Web Surfers Sue.

Our laws are lagging far behind the rapidly advancing and ever changing terrain of the world wide web that I must say this...we DO need to go to court to make those changes. We should follow the example of the organization, National Federation of the Blind, to enforce captioning requirements online.

Here's a quote from an article online - www.msnbc.com

The decision to hold Target's Web site to the same standards of accessibility as its physical store under the Americans with Disabilities Act was considered a victory by many advocates for the blind...

-National Federation of the Blind