From [Deafnetwork](http://deafnetwork.com/) By Lise Hamlin Director of Public Policy and State Development October 2, 2009 “This is NOT a test: Will the Nation’s Emergency Alert System Deliver the President’s Message to the Public?” That was the topic of a 3 ½ hour hearing before the US House of Representative’s Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, Subcommittee …
Category Archive: News
NAD Calls out Netflix on Captions
From [DeafNetwork](http://deafnetwork.com/). On September 9, 2009, the National Association of the Deaf requested that Netflix provide a captioned version of *The Wizard of Oz* movie that Netflix made available online, for free, for everyone on October 3, 2009. Netflix disregarded the NAD request along with thousands of letters, emails, comments, and tweets urging Netflix to …
New York Mets Deaf and Hard of Hearing Awareness Day
Date: Saturday, October 3, 2009 at 1:10pm New York Mets vs. Houston Astros – A pre-game ceremony at home plate will honor key community supporters. – Each person will receive a Citi Field Inaugural Season Scroll Pen (with advance purchase through this flyer or group ticket window). – All deaf and hard of hearing supporters …
HR 3101: Internet Captioning
Congress is working on HR 3101 known as the “21st Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act of 2009″, which would require making the internet more accessible using closed-captioning, real-time texting and video description. [NY Daily News](http://www.nydailynews.com/lifestyle/health/2009/09/01/2009-09-01_gov_bill_sends_the_digital_age_to_the_disabled_via_realtime_texting_and_other_in.html) reports, “The new bill would make closed captioning mandatory for large Internet television and movie distributors, excluding user-based sites …
Beward Scam Targets Deaf
Just got the following email — brilliant. They’re targeting the deaf. Because of their ability to not only identify me as a deaf person, but they also mention “Texas” (my home state). They mention National Association for the Deaf (NAD). The email doesn’t request a bank account — nonetheless, ignore the email. Here’s an excerpt: …
Text to Speech with TextAloud
I don’t forget other people have different challenges from the deaf. Just received a note about [TextAloud](http://www.nextup.com/TextAloud/index.html), a text reader solution that costs $30. TextAloud software translates any written text into speech including web sites,emails, documents and PDF files. TextAloud doesn’t require other hardware. Users export their reading into sound files for listening on portable …
Netflix and Captions
I heard the news on Twitter from an unexpected source: [@marleematlin](http://twitter.com/MarleeMatlin). I happened to browse Twitter and caught her tweet. It’s great to have someone with her name speaking out about Netflix’s lack of captions on streamed movies. Like it or not, celebrities can make things happen a little faster than as ornery folk. [Netflix …
CaptionTube: YouTube Captioning
[Mashable has a post on CaptionTube](http://mashable.com/2009/04/16/captiontube/), a service that makes it easier for users to add captions to their YouTube videos. [CaptionTube](http://captiontube.appspot.com/) requires a Google account (I think many of us have this by now). I tried out the service on my [skydiving video](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H8qKFrwQCXU). It was easy! I just played, paused, entered captions. However, the …
March 2009 Accessibility Updates
Laura Carlson reports many exciting accessibility updates. Why should businesses bother captioning? National Association of the Deaf (NAD) reports that 32 million Americans have some type of hearing loss and another 32 million Americans were born in another country (learning English). 18 million Americans are five-years-old or younger (reading). Now the latest happenings: The Paciello …
Word on the Tip of Your Finger?
Many of us have said, “It’s on the tip of my tongue… I know it. I can’t remember the word I’m looking for.” It happens to signers, too. This study indicates that it’s the brain’s misplacing of a memory — not a phonetic or vocalization issue. Deaf Signers Feel the Words on the Tip of …