Blessed be the Internet

While many of us may enjoy finding wild things on the internet like crazy webcomics like Penny Arcade and xkcd.com and 4chan, I have to say one thing that I am very happy about–networking. I realized that if internet never existed today, my life would have remained a solitary life in terms of interacting with other people that have the same disabilities as I do.

Internet really have changed the face of the world in many ways, allowing us to talk to anyone at any time we choose. The Y! Live chat is one example for us. If not for the internet, I would have been unable to research the issue about CART and then finding deafread, learning many different types of issues and people with variety of interests and personality, and being able to communicate with my former teachers that led to going to a deaf/blind Retreat in Orlando.

At this point, I really can’t imagine what life would be like right now–well, actually I can imagine, I probably would be continuing to try and interact with other people and bombing, failing that like whoa and sticking my nose in a book all the time. I probably would use the phone more as well, but with great reluctance.

Without the resources online, I wouldn’t have met so many amazing people, hearing, deaf, blind and deafblind alike due to my varied interests like anime/manga, sports, art, and generally making friends. However, I do agree that moderation is needed to not allow internet take over your life.

That’s happened to me a few times, I admit, but right now, I am finding a good moderation so I am pleased, though I am still struggling to find that moderation as I still stay up late to be online and get up early next morning to go to school. Not good for me.

Just a friendly reminder from me to you if you also spend inordinate amount of time online–don’t forget to go outside and smell the roses, online will still be here when you get back. smile

Thoughts on DeafRead and DeafBlind

After watching the blogs and comments in vlogs throwing their opinions about DeafRead and DeafBlind around, I came to this conclusion of my opinion. I want to say, “Shut up! Look around you! Can’t you see what you are doing?” I think there are many of us agree that we should be inclusive. I see that sort of comments often. Or maybe I am just naive and still haven’t seen comments crying “Get away you CI cyborgs! Go away Deafblind people, we don’t want you to trouble us with your kind,” or something along those lines. I hope there aren’t those type of people, but alas and alack, I must be hoping too much. However, I digress, I do see a lot of comments accepting people across all subgroup lines.

So, why is this still being an issue? Obviously, people are still claiming that people aren’t inclusive enough. I can see some of the reasons why for that, for example, the current hot issue in the blogosphere is the subtitling and using DeafBlind people as one of the reasons.

Let me remind/inform you–I am a person with Usher’s. Not only that, but also, I am learning ASL, so there’s two reasons already for me to wish for you to subtitle some of your videos. If you are in a hurry, then provide a nice, meaty summary of what the video is about. I don’t want to see one or two sentences, and rely on comments to gauge what the video was really about, I don’t think those two is a whole lot to go on when watching the video with some context in mind. Maybe a paragraph or two would be nice (four to six sentences a paragraph). And that would be a lot quicker than subtitling the entire video, wouldn’t it?

If we all think about it, it takes us few minutes to sign to the webcam/video camera, then upload it and then open up our blog to post the video. It should take five minutes to write a paragraph or two about the video, and if you’re up for it, transcribe roughly what you said. I know ASL and other languages are practically impossible to transliterate, so, transcribing some of what the signers would go a long ways.

It’s practically a win-win-win-win situation. The DeafBlind community wins, the people new to ASL wins, and people googling wins,  and this brings you even more viewers, which makes you a win too.

I really, really don’t understand the mentality of not wishing to summarize, subtitle or otherwise tell more of what the vlog is about than the title itself and the comments (and the occasional one or two liner sentences.

I have subtitled my videos and it’s not all that hard. I found it to be quite fun actually. (Unfortunately, my videos are really of poor quality and was just as means to learn ASL, nothing concrete.)

What does the vloggers have to lose by writing a paragraph or two about the video? Ten minutes at the maximum if you hurry it, and maybe about 5 minutes at the average. Just some stuff to think about.

Now, back to the topic at hand about DeafRead… Since, as far as I see, we want to be inclusive as much as possible, we ought to be more understanding–but since most of us seem to be understanding enough, how can we move forward from here on out? This is pretty new to Deaf Community, not really used to having to deal with CI users and other groups in general.

Here, I wish to share something on how to organize DeafRead better than it is now; I commented at DeafRead Take a Stand with the following comment:

As a relatively new reader to DeafRead (mid-December), I liked what I saw on here. For the first time in five and half years, I found a place where I thought I could make some long lasting commitment with a community.

It saddens to me to see the state of DeafRead is going through. What I realized that could work is that we create one or two more buttons under: All, Blogs, Vlogs, and Extras. Maybe one could be designated for topics relating to Cochlear implants (and their success stories and the like dealing with sounds.) Perhaps the title could be “New Sounds” or something along that line, maybe something more politically correct than that, I don’t know.

A second button could be for all things related to ASL or ones who do not speak, or maybe related to ‘culturally Deaf’ though that line is kind of blurry. Maybe if the editors and a poll/survey for all people on DeafRead.com and see how to correctly define the term, Culturally Deaf.

I feel the same way that I am getting sick of seeing success stories that is totally flat and I tend to tune out b/vlogs that deals with cochlear implants. So I think this type of category would be really beneficial to everyone else.

The tag system under each aggregated entries is all and good, but I think the intended use for that is for past entries and not getting the current and new entries. That is where the buttons filtering the “New Sounds” and “Culturally Deaf” entries would work rather well. Not to say that the titles I’ve given should be used, but yeah.

As for the whole thing with name calling and what not… I think there should be some sort of a rule where it is the blogger/vlogger’s responsibility in watching their comments and prevent a flame war from breaking out. If the rule is not abided by, then by all means, not show any future entries on DeafRead until the b/blogger regains control.

As for the whole thing with neutrality of the editors, I understand that no one could ever be neutral, and in fact, can harm people when the neutrality is gone and its colors show through through some sort of an incident.

As for any rouge commenters or b/vloggers that are being militant, same thing applies to the above mentioned rule, and some sort of action should be taken.

I hope my ideas have been beneficial in some ways to the community on DeafRead.

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Are we really ready to move forward in trying to resolve the problems at hand dealing with DeafRead?

Attention C.I. Users–prohibitive costs of batteries?

I was told that if I get a second cochlear implant, the costs would rise in caring for two processors instead of one. That is obvious to me, yes, I know it would cost twice as much. However, I am puzzled by this information I was given by the VR. Is there a processor whose batteries only last six hours and costs something in the neighborhood of 150 for batteries?

That didn’t sound right, and  if it was a false information, then it would not show up in search, and so I want this bit of information confirmed. My case worker at VR also seem to imply that I would have the new processor to replace the old one, thus raising the costs still further. If the costs of batteries is true, then I am afraid that I will not get the new processor–if it is Freedom Nucleus. Or if the case worker is correct but is not the Freedom Nucleus with the expensive, short-life span batteries but something else entirely, then I would like the link to such information.

If there is such a processor with expensive batteries with six hour life, then… I feel like I’m back in the dark ages. My current one, BTE Nucleus, lasts four to five days without changing the batteries and is very cheap.  I am sad that BTE will be made obsolete, I love my BTE.