Deaf Legislative Day

Deaf Legislative Day is an assigned day for us to visit the state capitol to tour and have an opportunity to meet legislators. Workshops and speeches are often presented regarding specific issues within the deaf community.

The 'real deal' with attending Deaf Legislative Day is how to become a better citizen armed with knowledge of how to efficiently advocate within a group or to self-advocate. I will be attending Minnesota's Deaf Legislative Day on March 8th and I urge you to attend your state's assigned Deaf Legislative Day.

Promote Deaf Youth in Government.

We cannot learn to swim from a textbook. We have to go out to the pool and jump in the water to learn how to swim.

'Youth in Government' is a YMCA program that enables high school students to have an interactive learning and understanding how politics work by being in the midst of it.

I have recommended the program to my alma mater at Minnesota State Academy for the Deaf and Minnesota North Star Academy. I hope you will too because deaf politicians are the ones that truly will make changes for us rather than constantly lobbying for change with the people that don't have full understanding of us.

Closed-Captioning Enabled Ordinance

With a new legislature in Minnesota, it's been widely talked about that there will be a state-wide smoking ban in indoor public places and workplaces within a year or two. This has come through from many cities adopting their own city-wide smoking ban ordinance. With this ideology, I came up with an ordinance called 'Closed-Captioning Enabled' ordinance for cities that will later on with the support of many cities to become a state law and who knows, a federal law on this. I am currently working on this to have it enacted in St. Paul, Minnesota. Please feel more than free to copy this letter that I have drafted and propose this to your city council and get this enacted.

Hello [Name],

My name is [ ]. I am interested in proposing a new city ordinance for [City], [State]. I would like to meet with you to work together on this to make it happen.

The ordinance that I have written is;

---
Closed-Captioning Enabled Ordinance

Effective Dates and Coverage Areas:
July 1, 2007: this ordinance requires closed-captioning feature to be enabled in all televisions at all times in public indoor and outdoor places and workplaces.
---

This proposed ordinance is valuable to all people with hearing loss; people with English as their second language; reduces the noise pollution; children will rapidly learn to read.

I want to be clear about this proposed ordinance that this is not requiring the television programs to be captioned. It merely asks that the televisions to have its closed-captioning feature enabled so that the closed-captioning will appear if the programs has it.

Please do not hesitate to contact me if you have any questions or concerns. Again, I would very much like to work with you or others on this to make this happen for our fellow citizens.

Thanks,
[Name]
[Home address]
[Phone number]
[E-mail address]

Raise the Priority of Captioning at Netflix...

Netflix has recently announced that they will offer subscribers the option of instantly watching movies on their PCs within six months. I called them and asked them about the captioning issue of being transmitted online. They’ve apologized that captions and subtitles will not show online and they are working on it amongst the hundred bugs and kinks. My best bet is that captioning is at the bottom of their list of bugs and kinks. I urge you all to call them at this number 1.800.715.2135 and raise the priority of captioning at Netflix.

Leaving Idaho Deaf School to be Closed?

I have been monitoring the events as they unfold at Idaho school for the Deaf and Blind and one frustrating thing is...why aren't more people outside of Idaho stepping in to help the Idaho deaf citizens? I can understand that every state has its own problems and their own citizens are attending to it. The bigger issue for me is - why aren't Gallaudet University, National Technical Institute for Deaf, National Association of the Deaf, et al stepping in? Isn't it their mission to serve the deaf citizens at large whether they are afflicted or not with the school or organization?

To whom have the right connections with Gallaudet, NTID, NAD, et al. Please ask them about stepping in to assist Idaho deaf citizens to save the residential school. Two links are provided to contact and offer your assistance; Idaho Association of the Deaf and Idaho Council for the Deaf.

Target Survey (win $5,000 GiftCard or a Saturn Vue)

For some time now, when you shop at Target, on your receipt it offers you a chance to win $5,000 GiftCard or a Saturn Vue if you fill out their online survey about your shopping experience.

I love doing this survey not because I am in it for the prize but I get in give my feedback in regards to accessibility for the deaf. The survey merely takes few minutes of your time and at the end of the survey it'll ask you an open-ended question, "What can we do to serve you better?" I type in the same feedback over and over... that they could have the majority of their employees to learn basic sign language, to have all TVs in the store including the electronics department to have captions showing, to have all Target exclusive DVDs to be captioned/subtitled, and to have all their online videos on Target website to be captioned.

I urge you guys to do the same when you get home from shopping at Target.

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

I've Moved!

DeafRead, now offers people to blog under WordPress from their site. I've decided to take up on it because my blog serves to the deaf and signing community. My new blog site is

http://blog.deafread.com/sonnyjames/

Survey to Determine Interpreter Shortage.

Your Participation Needed!

The National Collaborative of Interpreter Education Centers (NCIEC) is conducting a federally-funded, wide-scale assessment project to quantify the interpreter supply and demand nationwide.

The purpose of the survey is to determine the shortage of interpreters in the United States.

If you decide to take part in this study, you will fill out a survey/questionnaire about when you need an interpreter, the types of settings in which you need interpreters and when you cannot get interpreters. It will take about 7 minutes.

Use the following URL for more information http://www.zoomerang.com/recipient/survey-intro.zgi?p=WEB225RVTNWUX3

Go Out And Vote On November 7th!

Go out and vote then tell others to vote too.

Most polling places are open from 7 am to 8 pm. If you have not registered to vote, you can register at the polling place. You'll need to bring something that verifies your address with a picture ID.

Links On Deaf Political Candidate.

I live ten blocks away from Emory Dively district to vote him to the Minnesota's House of Represenatives on November 7th. Normally I would vote on a person's political views but hey, Emory is Deaf, I'd vote for him. You can learn more of Emory at his website www.emorydively.com.

Yesterday, one of the most read newspaper in the state of Minnesota, Pioneer Press, printed a nice article on Emory. Click on the link below. You will also get to view Emory's campaigning technique.

http://www.twincities.com/mld/twincities/15891996.htm

Today in the same newspaper, a columnist Joe Souchery pokes fun at Emory's campaign. Read about it at the link below.

http://www.twincities.com/mld/twincities/news/columnists/15897394.htm

Tomorrow on November 2nd from 7-8:30 pm, there will be an open debate between Emory and his opponent for the district 64B at the College of St. Catherine. I should also note that the College of St. Catherine is one of three colleges in Minnesota that offers interpreting programs and also offers ASL as a major or a minor.

Look Back At 2001 Transcript of Dr. Fernandes.

After reading this heartfelt letter;

We have not spoken out because there has been no reason to bring in the deaths of Eric and Benjamin Varner into the picture. But since this door has opened by you or by the university/Jane Fernandes, we are speaking out now to set the record straight. It is a door that we truly never wished to have seen opened in the first place.

-Cogswell Hall Staff of 2000-2001

I went through the archives of the WashingtonPost.com to see in a different light of what happened back then during Mesa's reign of terror. I found a Live Online Discussion of Dr. Fernandes dated February 7th, 2001, a few days after the second murder. Rather than posting a critique of Dr. Fernandes responses to the questions. I'll allow you to read and make your own judgment.

Unsubscribed from Time Magazine.

Upon reading this article online "When Silence Isn't Golden" by John Cloud from Time magazine on the Gallaudet crisis. I immediately shot back with a letter to the editor.

I am shocked, beyond shocked! How can an accomplished magazine, Time, do an article this terrible?! Then it dawned to me that perhaps all of your articles are a bunch of bull and hogwash all along. I am ashamed to have read your magazine in the past and recommended it to others. I will no longer subscribe to Time and will recommend others to drop Time as well until a follow-up article has been published with an accurate article of how the administration is destroying Gallaudet University.

Sonny Wasilowski
St. Paul, MN

Wall Street Journal Online: Gives Us A Boost.

I have received permission from the writer to post his article on this blog. This online edition of Wall Street Journal gives us major exposure to all the VIPs of small, medium, and large companies on the demand of online captioning.

Deaf Web Users Fear Being Left Behind
As TV Shows Stream Onto the Internet

By ANDREW LAVALLEE
October 25, 2006

The Internet has been a boon to deaf computer users, giving them easy access to a wide variety of information and breaking down communication barriers. But many of those users feel left behind by one of the Internet's fastest-growing segments: online video.

Though television networks and movie studios are rapidly expanding into Internet distribution, few online videos offer the closed captioning that companies are required by law to offer to TV viewers. The major networks provide full-length episodes of some of their most popular shows on the Web, including hits like "Lost" and "Survivor," but none of them include captions. Apple Computer Inc.'s iTunes store sells downloads of more than 200 TV shows, but doesn't offer versions with captions, and the company's popular iPod player doesn't support them.

The absence of online captions has emerged as a hot topic in the deaf community. The media providers say they are held back by technological hurdles, and point out that online distribution of TV content is still in its infancy. But advocates for the deaf and hard of hearing say the lack of captions is a slight, since most programs have already been transcribed to comply with Federal Communications Commission rules. They are pushing to update government regulations to cover the Internet.

"It's like history repeating itself from TV to Internet," said Jim House, a spokesman for Telecommunications for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing Inc., a Silver Spring, Md., deaf advocacy group. Groups lobbied networks to caption shows starting in the 1980s, he said. Regulations put in place in the 1990s by the FCC and Congress required TV manufacturers to make sets compatible with closed-captioning signals, and set a timetable for networks to include captions with their broadcasts. While captions are now common on U.S. broadcasts, it wasn't until January of this year that they became mandatory for all English-language programs produced since 1998.

"I'm hoping we do not have to wait another 25 years" to bring captioning to Internet video, Mr. House said.

The FCC rules that require TV shows to include captions don't apply to online programs (one exception¹ requires federal agencies to caption speeches and other videos they provide online). Some groups, including the National Association for the Deaf, are lobbying lawmakers to expand the captioning requirements in the Telecommunications Act of 1996 to include the Internet.

According to the National Institutes of Health, between 500,000 and 750,000 people in the U.S. are "profoundly" deaf, and 32.5 million American adults have some degree of hearing loss. The numbers are expected to increase as the population grows older.

"We shouldn't have to be legislating this anymore," said Rosaline Crawford, an attorney with the National Association for the Deaf, a nonprofit advocacy group based in Maryland. "If you've got captions on your program that's broadcast on TV, it can't be rocket science to take those captions and put them on the Internet."

There are technology constraints to online captioning that don't exist in TV broadcasts. For TV broadcasts, producers generally use outside companies to create captions for programs, which are then transmitted using a standard format that can be read by TV sets.

But on the Web, video is served up using a variety of popular software players, including Microsoft Corp.'s Windows Media Player, Apple's Quicktime, RealNetworks Inc.'s RealPlayer and Adobe Systems Inc.'s Flash Player. All of the players are capable of including captions with video, but each has a different -- and incompatible -- way of handling them. "It's fabulously complicated to translate TV captions into online formats," said Joe Clark, an accessibility consultant who has extensively studied closed captioning, and writes about it on his Web site².

Still, Mr. Clark is critical of slow progress networks are making with online captioning. One problem, he said, is that large media companies often have different divisions handling broadcast and online distribution, so captions can get lost in the shuffle. He said he believes TV networks are underestimating demand for online captions.

Representatives at ABC and NBC said the networks are looking into online captioning, but declined to provide details. Fox and CBS said they have no plans to caption the Web versions of their entertainment programs. But CBSNews.com, which serves up a live, online version of "CBS Evenings News with Katie Couric," is in talks with a company to provide online captioning, said Michael Sims, director of news and operations for the site. "We have been working to determine what the best standard to do this is," he said. "We're in the meeting stage."

An Apple spokesman said the company's iTunes store and iPod media players don't support closed-captioning, but said the next version of the company's Macintosh operating system will make it easier for its QuickTime video software to integrate closed-captioning text.

"The Internet has traditionally been a place where I could, as a deaf person, go and get equal access to information," said Jared Evans, a 32-year-old software developer in San Diego. "The vast majority of content on the Internet has been text and images which you don't need hearing abilities in order to understand the content."

Mr. Evans said the boom in online video has been "a step backward" for deaf users: While material is easier to access, the lack of captioning makes it less useful than traditional TV broadcasts. "These same companies already have decades of experience in adding captions to content on TV, but are opting to not do the same with their online content."

Joseph Santini, a 28-year-old social worker in New York who is deaf, was excited when Apple released a version of its iPod player capable of playing videos. "The only time I have for watching TV, like many others these days, is on the subway," said Mr. Santini. But he was disappointed to learn that the TV shows for sale on iTunes didn't carry captions. "Entertainment aside, what about my future employment prospects? How long before it becomes standard to get all news, information about the city, on video-capable devices? I see this coming, I want to be part of the future."

A few companies have taken some steps to offer captions for online video. In July, Time Warner Inc.'s AOL began offering captions for some CNN newscasts. Working with captioners at WGBH, a Boston public broadcasting station, AOL serves up about 20 captioned stories a day, said Tom Wlodkowski, AOL's director of accessibility. CNN doesn't offer captioning for clips on CNN.com.

Google Video in September began letting users submit captions with their videos. The captions can be toggled on and off by viewers by hitting a "CC" button while the video is playing in Google's custom software. Although the site's selection of captioned videos is small, Google Inc. now asks major content providers to include captions whenever possible, said Ken Harrenstien, a deaf software engineer at Google who helped develop the feature. "It's not so much that it's a technical issue," he said. "More a process of consciousness-raising.

Write to Andrew LaVallee at andrew.lavallee@wsj.com³

	URL for this article: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB116137109874699183.html
	Hyperlinks in this Article: (1) http://www.section508.gov/ (2) http://www.joeclark.org (3) mailto:andrew.lavallee@wsj.com

We Stepped Up, Not Dr. Fernandes.

Below is an e-mail that I've sent to Craig Plunkett after I read his article on September October 22nd issue of the Washington Post.

---

Dear Craig,

My name is Sonny Wasilowski. I knew your son, Eric. He and I are proud graduates of Minnesota State Academy for the Deaf. I was there as a student at Gallaudet when he was murdered. Every year on September 28, I think of him and talk about him to others that know him. I love and miss him dearly.

I am writing to you in response to your article in the Sunday’s issue of the Washington Post paper. I read it as I was heading back to Minnesota from Washington, DC to give my support to the people involved with the protest. The people that you have called them, radicals, have stunned me because you have not only described me as one but also your son, Eric, as one. If Eric was alive today, I know he would have been with us asking for Dr. Fernandes’ resignation so that the presidential search may be re-opened and that there will be no reprisals to the people involved in the protest.

During Mesa’s reign of terror, the faculty, staff, and students stepped up, not Dr. Fernandes. Did you know, it was a small group of students including myself from Minnesota led by a staff, Deb Skjeveland, not Dr. Fernandes, that founded the scholarship in Eric’s name? Did you know that the majority of the people on campus knew it was someone within us that carried out the murder of Eric but Dr. Fernandes cried to us and the media that the murderer came from outside? Did you know that the murders would have never occurred, if had Dr. Fernandes expelled Mesa from MSSD for multiple thefts? I hold Dr. Fernandes accountable for the murders, not as one who stepped up for Gallaudet.

The protest is not led by mere 10 percent of the student body, as you believe. The numbers are much larger and it is essential to recognize that the faculty, staff, alumni, and parents are very much involved in this. Please take the time to educate yourself of the protest at http://www.gufssa.org. This protest is not about Dr. Fernandes not being “deaf enough.” It is about her failures of leadership and loss of support from the campus community.

I hope you and your family will reconsider the endorsement you have given to Dr. Fernandes to be the next president of Gallaudet.

Thanks,
Sonny Wasilowski
sonnyjames(at)yahoo.com

PS – In the future, please refrain from offensive comments regarding the intelligence of the faculty, staff, students, alumni, and parents that they will not remember their past presidents and what it takes to run a university or how a university president is chosen. We are in this protest because we do know our past presidents and know how a university president is chosen or what it takes to run a university.

Bring Your Tent...

Yesterday at Minnesota State Academy for the Deaf in Faribault...I attended their football game against Missouri School for the Deaf. The game ended with the score of 66-0 with Minnesota winning their conference title, Great Plains School for the Deaf (GPSD) composed of Kansas, Iowa, Minnesota, and Missouri. Minnesota girls won their GPSD volleyball title over the weekend at Council Bluffs, IA. Go Minnesota!

On a spur of a moment as I drove to the game, I decided to make a stop at my brother's home. I picked up a tent and lawn chairs as a symbol for the people at the game to think and talk about the crisis at Gallaudet University.

To view pictures of the game and the tent with its lawn chairs in the background, head on over to Lisa's blog.

Next time, you head over to a football game, bring your tent and lawn chairs. Take pictures and post it up on your or your friend's blog. Consider this a mini-Tent City of the Tent Cities popping up across America and the globe.