By Pat Bliss It took me 5 1/2 hours to drive to Jarratt, VA to see Felix at his new prison camp, Greensville Correctional Center. I spent the night on Friday May 6th, and visited on Saturday, May 7th. He was very excited because it was not only our first Virginia visit, but also Mothers […]
By Jean F. Andrews Deaf babies should learn sign language just as soon as their hearing loss is diagnosed, at birth, 3 months, 6 months or before the age of two. Recent research in Neuroscience and Psycholinguistics has shown that when a baby’s brain is exposed to two languages between the ages of 6 and […]
By Jean F. Andrews On Friday, November 13, 2015, at the University of Houston’s Jose Quintero Theater on campus, the National Theater of the Deaf entertained a mixed audience of hearing and Deaf members. They presented a show called “A Show of Hands.” Behind a bright green vertically slotted curtain, you could only see the […]
By BitcoDavid My Sign tutor recommended I watch the following video. It offers a unique insight into Deaf culture and the problems associated with intercommunication between our two languages, English and ASL. I had hoped to embed the video, but the original publisher blocked embedding on their YouTube page. Below please find the link to […]
By Jean F. Andrews Recently, I covered the International Congress on the Education of the Deaf, in Greece. Here’s an update on that story. In the Maryland Bulletin (Spring, 2015, p. 12), James E. Tucker, Superintent of the Maryland School for the deaf in Frederick, Maryland wrote about the recent lack of sign language interpreters […]
By BitcoDavid I made this graphic to commemorate our 100,000 views. It’s taken us almost 4 years to do. In that time, our 7 authors and numerous supporter contributors have created 573 posts. We’ve reached 43,000 individual visitors, and our message has been seen at least once in every country on Earth. Now, we’re officially […]
By Pat Bliss You sometimes wonder – will the moves, the accusations, the disruptions ever end for Felix? Well, here we are again having to have Felix moved from his home camp of Marion Correctional to protect his life. We had to move him fast, when he was at Tomoka C.I., because he divulged to […]
By Jean F. Andrews In a southern state in a Federal prison, Jill is serving a 10-year term. While sign language interpreters are provided for her when her attorney comes to visit or during her hearings with the judge, she does not get interpreting services within the prison. For example, she does not fully understand […]
By BitcoDavid A few months ago, we did a piece on Si5S, a written form of ASL. Si5S deserves your attention because it nullifies the argument that ASL isn’t a language due to the fact that it has no written form. But its relevance goes beyond that. For one thing, it can help non-Signers learn […]
By BitcoDavid It’s written in an ASL finger spelling font, that is available for free download, from Gallaudet via LifePrint. This is useable as a novelty font, allowing the user to write English in the ASL finger spelling alphabet. But what if Sign actually had its own alphabet – or Digibet, if you will? For […]
By BitcoDavid It was like the 7 labors of Hercules! All kidding aside, it was a great project and I am proud and happy to have been a part of it. So, without further ado… As I am working more and more with Sign now, I’m learning some of the significant differences between ASL and […]
By Jean F. Andrews Reading continues to be one of the major obstacles for deaf adults in obtaining their Constitutional Rights. Reading court and legal documents is next to impossible. Even with a sign language interpreter the concepts are difficult to grasp. In the ivory tower the debate is whether the reading process is qualitatively […]
By Jean F. Andrews Deaf people are treated unfairly by housing leasing staff, according to a front-page story in the Houston Chronicle, January 27, 2014 by news reporter Jayme Fraser. In fact, office managers are reported to have rudely hung up on deaf inquirers who call in using relay interpreters. Why is this situation still happening in this […]
By BitcoDavid As a full third of Americans hunker down and prepare for Armageddon Storm 2014, I thought I might talk about some of my New Years resolutions. Now, I’m not a big resolution guy. I find that people tend to hit the ground running, but lose steam after about a month or so, leaving […]
By Jean F. Andrews [Author’s Note: Dr. Paris is an assistant professor in the Dept of Deaf Studies/Deaf Education at Lamar University. She has done research with Native American Deaf Communities. — Jean Andrews] Native American and Deaf Communities: Parallels of Oppression Damara Paris, Ed.D, CRC, NCC Recently, the news has been rife with reports […]
By Jean F. Andrews Learning ASL and English does not happen quickly. It takes time as do all first language and second language learning. Delays in language learning is a fact in many deaf persons’ lives. But it does not have to be. Being deaf does not cause a language delay. It is the lack […]
By Jean F. Andrews Since I’ve been in higher education, I’ve seen an increase in numbers of graduate students who are deaf apply to deaf education programs. I have also seen the increase in the hiring of professors who are deaf in different institutions where I have worked. The topics of their research papers are […]
By Joanne Greenberg About 40 years ago, a man called me up on the telephone. “I read your book, In This Sign, and I think you would be the one to work on a film I have in mind.” I was annoyed. “I’ve never written a script,” I said. He went on. “I have a […]
By BitcoDavid Have a half an hour to kill, and wanna have some great fun? You’ll love this ASL version of the Wizard of Oz, performed by Eyes Alive! they are an elementary school performing arts group at the Florida School for the Deaf and the Blind. The kids are just great, and it’s good […]
By BitcoDavid Shanna Groves – the Lipreading Mom – did a fascinating post this morning, on an alternative method of communication called Cued Speech. Apparently, this is a system by which, both lip-readers and Signers can communicate with each other, and the Hearing. The system works on phonemes. That’s a fancy – yeah, I got […]
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