U.S. Department of Education via Fax
I am writing to inform you of a Civil Rights violation that occurred on the campus of LaGuardia Community College on October 15, 2016, and was sponsored by the LaGuardia Program for Deaf Adults, Sorenson Communications and the U.S. Department of Education, as a “Deaf Self-Advocacy” seminar.
Did you know there’s a troubling, but rich, history using the term “Deaf-Mute” in America? Janna and I have written a new book “conversation” about that pejorative label released by David Boles Books Writing & Publishing titled — Return of the Deaf-Mute: The Lost Legacy of the Greatest American Deaf Generation — and in our book, we examine the “Deaf-Mute” stereotype in history, its effect on common culture, and the role of human tolerance in society today. How did the “Deaf-Mute” label become such a colloquial monstrosity that it has repressed generations of Deaf people in America — just because it was a convenient, default, categorization that had nothing to do with context or fact of condition?
Continue reading → Return of the Deaf-Mute: Our Next Deaf Culture Conversation
We have a horrible new neighbor living above us, and she’s young and preppy and VERY LOUD! She bangs things on her wood floor/our ceiling all day and all night long. She walks heavy on her heels back and forth and back again. She drags her furniture across her wood floor/our ceiling that creates fingernails-on-chalkboard by osmosis.
I have taken to using earplugs when she’s at her most obnoxious and the earplugs do seem to filter out the precise range of her banging on our heads to make her terrorism from above us sort of tolerable. I’ll leave the whole injustice of, “Why should I have to wear earplugs all day long so I can’t hear you being obnoxious?” question for another day.
Continue reading → That Ringing in Your Ears is the Music of Your Mind
A whisper, if performed the right way, isn’t about hearing something at all. A whisper is all about feeling. A whisper is a public intimacy between two people wrapped in secretive sharing and a sensational tickling as puffs of warm words are delivered to the skin surrounding the receiver’s ear.
Irma Azrelyant and Joshua Finkle, the former co-owners of New York and New Jersey-based Deaf and Hard of Hearing Interpreting Services Inc. (DHIS), pleaded guilty today to engaging in a conspiracy to defraud the Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC) Video Relay Service (VRS) program of more than $7 million, announced Assistant Attorney General Lanny A. Breuer of the Criminal Division.
Today, Azrelyant, 47, and Finkle, 41, pleaded guilty before U.S. District Court Judge Joel A. Pisano in Trenton, N.J., to conspiracy to commit mail fraud. Azrelyant and Finkle were indicted on Oct. 29, 2009, along with DHIS assistant bookkeeper and video interpreter coordinator Oksana Strusa, as well as video interpreters Natan Zfati, Alfia Iskandarova and Hennadii Holovkin.
In pleading guilty, Azrelyant and Finkle admitted that beginning in approximately October 2007 and continuing through approximately July 2009, they conspired with others to pay individuals to make fraudulent VRS phone calls that were processed through DHIS, and that were billed to the FCC through VRS provider Viable Communications Inc. According to the guilty pleas, Azrelyant and Finkle made VRS calls to prerecorded messages and other numbers for the sole purpose of generating VRS minutes and also coordinated with others to generate illegitimate VRS minutes that would be invoiced to the FCC. Azrelyant and Finkle also admitted to processing illegitimate VRS calls that were routed to DHIS by Viable….
According to information contained in the plea documents, Azrelyant and Finkle admitted that their role in defrauding the FCC’s VRS program led to a total of between $7 million and $20 million in fraudulent billing to the program. At sentencing, Azrelyant and Finkle each face a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison, a fine of $250,000, as well as mandatory restitution and forfeiture. Sentencing is set for June 29, 2010 at 10 a.m.
Continue reading → Defrauding the Federal Video Relay Service
Forget soundAMP for the iPhone and the traditional cochlear implant — embedded MP3 Bone Hearing is here!
soundAMP is one of those ten dollar chunks of software you cannot live without if you have an iPhone. soundAMP brings “Super Hearing” to your ears using amplification and a simple-to-use interface.
Today I will provide a warning in an admonition I hope you will accept my correction in the healing spirit in which it is offered. I have a lot of friends and associates that rely on dogs — Service Animals, if you will — in order to live a more average life. These special dogs are raised by families as puppies and only the most dedicated and pure-of-heart dogs make it into a lifetime of service.
Is an “Audio Book” a book?
In our recent discussion about The Essence of a Book we determined there is a special beauty in a book that can only beheld between your hands.
by Tammy Tillotson
“I saw clearly that it was useless to try to teach her language or anything else until she learned to obey me. I have thought about it a great deal, and the more I think, the more certain I am that obedience is the gateway through which knowledge, yes, and love, too, enter the mind of a child.” — Anne Sullivan, teacher of Helen Keller
Cochlear Devices: An Obedient Decision
As medical professionals have found that deaf children between the ages of one to three are more likely to respond well to cochlear implants, will this parental decision of technological obedience adversely affect the child’s experience within the Deaf Community and Culture?
The answer is largely a matter of personal perspective based on two main arguments.
Continue reading → Cochlear Devices & the Deaf Community: Hearing Within
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