I have come across more than one comment that makes it clear some consider the requirement to learn English a form of audism toward deaf people. I am unconvinced. In the following discussion I am referring strictly to reading and writing English; speaking English is a completely different matter and must be handled […]

I said I’d put together a post on cochlear implants earlier this month. First a disclaimer: I don’t have one, nor do I have plans to get one. I’m fairly neutral about them although I do find it annoying many hearing people assume I’d get one at the drop of a hat.
So, what […]

Well, I’ll be taking ASL classes starting in January. Should be interesting! In the meantime I’ve been looking at online resources.
There’s a dictionary here that’s been around quite some time.
There are actually online signing classes, such as this one although I have no idea of their extent or quality.
I also know […]

On a four day holiday (counting the weekend) I’m having fun doing pretty much just what I want to do. Bumming around on the ‘net, starting up xmas projects, tidying up loose ends that’s hard to do when on the run for most of the week, that kind of thing.
Just wanted to point out […]

I was talking with a friend the other day and I happened to mention how I didn’t care for most sound outside of people’s voices and he said, birds chirping in the morning
OK, let’s take a beautiful morning. You’ve got the sun peeking up, maybe through some clouds but either way the […]

Well, there’s the good news and the bad news
First the wonderful news: it looks like all the pressure on the FCC is paying off. They have granted more reasonable blocks of time to prepare objections to the requested exemptions; previously it looked like the FCC was going to simply railroad things through […]

One of the things that has struck me in reading about deaf education these last couple of months is this extremely common rationalization that I see:
“English is a second language for many deaf people, so their English skills are usually at fourth grade level or so.”
This concept just boggles my mind. But on reflection […]

One of the nicest things about searching out other deaf folk on the internet, especially now, is finding the personal blogs that others write. Having grown up isolated from other deaf, and not really connecting with other deaf folk even online till now, it’s been really nice to find other folks with similar backgrounds […]

There are plenty of applications that can read off printed text. Windows has had that capability available in its setup for several years that I can recall now. And for the visual impaired that’s extremely helpful. There’s even a voice recognition module that lets you control things by speaking to it, again […]

I’ve had my new hearing aids for a week now. I went from analog to digital (finally). The sound quality is actually quite good and I’m happy to get rid of most of the feedback that the old one had. The sound is about the same, which is a definite relief (I’ve […]