I’m excited to be on a public interpreting assignment this morning, on call to interpret for any ASL user (deaf or hard-of-hearing person) who wants to see and learn about the accessibilty features of Valley Metro Light Rail. Light rail will start running here in the Valley of the Sun (Phoenix, Tempe, and Mesa) on December 27, and will be free through December 31. Today, at the 38th St / Washington station, we’re here from 9a-Noon and 2p-5p. I’m learning a lot in the process of interpreting and asking questions myself between clients, and I’m totally jazzed about riding the rail when it opens!
When I signed on to YouTube this morning, I noticed a new feature called Annotations that allows you to add Speech Bubbles, Notes, and Spotlights to your videos. I realized right away that the first two of these types of annotations gave me a way to caption my videos. They don’t allow for “closed” captioning; everyone who views the video sees them by default. There is a mechanism people can use, though, to turn them off while viewing them by clicking on the Menu button at the bottom of the player.
This morning, I captioned a video that I recorded on Mother’s Day. At the time of this writing, it seems that you can only see the captions if you view the video on YouTube. YouTube says that, once they get this feature out of beta, they will support embeds, meaning that the annotations will show up when videos are shared in blogs, on Facebook, and the like.
Although it was time-consuming (it took me about 45 minutes to an hour to caption a one-minute-forty-five-second [1:45] video), the graphical user interface (GUI) was rather intuitive. From my first experience using YouTube’s Annotations, I am certainly willing to use them again. Hooray for an easier way to caption videos!
I was hoping that my colleague A Dreamer (yes, that’s his name) would be televised as he interpreted the National Anthem into ASL at the beginning of the big game. Unfortunately, this year’s coverage of the signing of the Star Spangled Banner was even less satisfying than last year’s. Last year, we at least got to watch Marlee Matlin signing “bombs bursting in air” on the big screen. This year, I was only able to see — by watching very carefully — the interpreter signing “flag was still there” (all in one nicely inflected ASL sign, by the way) on the Jumbo Tron behind Jordin Sparks’ head.
And what about that Deaf Pepsi ad that was supposed to air? I never saw it. Did you?
While Apple has announced a new Apple TV and movie rentals on iTunes, now more than ever it’s high time they made sure that all their video content is closed captioned. With the writers’ strike affecting television programming and more people switching to downloadable content, let’s not take a huge step backward by delivering a huge mess of inaccessible content over the Internet! The ADA does not require Internet deliverables to be closed-captioned because the ADA was drafted before the Internet, but the spirit of the law is to ensure that people have access to media, and since most movies and television shows have already been captioned for legacy media, it shouldn’t be difficult to deliver those captions along with new media. Apple has put the technology in place for the viewing of closed captions in iTunes, QuickTime, and iPods. The next step is actually selling and renting closed-captioned videos!
Posted in Consumer Reviews, Deaf Culture
Tagged accessibility, Apple, closed-captioning, deaf, download, Internet, iTunes, opinion, review, video rental
I got this fortune in a fortune cookie a few weeks ago and carried it around in my wallet. Coincidentally, a story I was commissioned to write for the book eyes of desire 2, a deaf glbt reader was published, and the book came out just last week.
I found this to be an interesting fortune because one usually doesn’t get a fortune this specific. I mean, how many people will become accomplished writers? I suppose many people are accomplished writers in one way or another, but I found especial hope in this fortune for myself.
I’m not particular proud of the story I told in this book– the story of how my first lover was deaf, and how he turned out not to be able to hold adult conversations on a deep level. I was young and naïve, and I didn’t know enough ASL when I first met him to realize that he was incapable of communicating about abstract concepts. I didn’t know what to expect from a deaf person, I didn’t realize how intelligent most deaf people are, and I didn’t even know how to communicate abstract thoughts myself in ASL, so how could I expect him to do so?
My story is not the most bright, cheerful, inspiring, or uplifting story in the book, but it was honest, and it depicts a reality that happened to me, and might happen to others as well. It’s a story I really didn’t want to tell, but I forced myself to, because I had to come to terms with a chapter of my past that haunted me for years. In fact, I often thought that I remained single for so much of my life after that because I was being punished for breaking his heart by leaving him. Who knows? Luckily, I’m long past that now, and have a wonderful marriage with a man I love dearly, a man I truly can talk with about anything and everything. And I still wish the best for my ex, my first lover, the man who gave me the impetus to master ASL and become the interpreter I am today.
I’m creating this as a post on my blog so that people who read the book and look me up through my bio in the book have a space to leave comments on the story. Thanks to Raymond for publishing the story. I welcome your comments.
Please be kind. 
I was excited to hear that Marlee Matlin would be signing the American National Anthem (“The Star-Spangled Banner”) at Super Bowl XLI, but was disappointed to see her on television only during the phrase “the bombs bursting in air.” Whatever happened to the “signer in the bubble”? I would think they could put an Academy Award-winning deaf actress in a picture-in-picture “bubble” so that her performance of our National Anthem could be enjoyed throughout the duration of the song. Apparently, the director of the televised broadcast underestimated ASL and its many users.
I would like to believe that in the year 2007, accessibility for deaf people and the beauty of ASL would be esteemed by American society. Sadly, the Super Bowl XLI broadcast reminds me that American Sign Language and Deaf Culture are still relegated to a momentary side show.
Posted in Interpreting for the Deaf
Tagged accessibility, ASL, deaf, interpreting, Marlee Matlin, opinion, review, sign language, sports, Super Bowl, television
Thanks to my friend and colleague who tipped me off to this poll and its accompanying article: Gallaudet Dumps Incoming President – AOL News
After my friend voted today shortly after noon, he wrote:
What do you think of the school’s decision to fire its incoming president?
It seems unfair 46%
It seems fair 30%
Not sure 24%
Total Votes: 13,115
OK, so again, not a scientific poll and most of these people responding are, of course, hearing and have little to no knowledge of Deaf culture. Just thought I’d share the thoughts of a few (thousand) others.
I was one of the 30% who said is seems fair, though I wish they had a column that said, “Just but long overdue.”
I just voted now after 6 PM MST (“It seems fair,” of course) and sadly, the results were still exactly the same: Continue reading →
I have been an ASL interpreter since 1990 and have trusted NPR as my primary news source for more than a decade. Sadly, you shook my faith in your reporting last night when you made ostensibly “factual” statements about Jane K. Fernandes that sounded like they came right out of her administration’s Public Relations Office.
Dr. Fernandes couldn’t have described herself better than you did when you said, “She’s deaf, but some protesters don’t like that she grew up speaking and reading lips, before she learned sign language.”
Contrary to what Dr. Fernandes would like the world to believe, her late ASL acquisition is not what the protesters don’t like about her. Shame on you for being a mouthpiece for Fernandes! You should have done your homework and read that blog you reported about: ridorlive.com. Or, for primary source material, you could have read the many statements and open letters at gufssa.org. Read those, along with the blog entries syndicated at deafread.com, and then you will be qualified to report on what Gallaudet University faculty, staff, students, and alumni don’t like about Fernandes.
The statement, “Others resent the tough decisions she’s made as a long-time administrator,” sounds just like Fernandes, too. Continue reading →
When I heard last week on NPR that an Italian priest who “helped the deaf” in the late 1800s had been canonized as a saint, I couldn’t help wondering: was he at the Milan Conference of 1880, a conference of “educators of deaf-mutes” who moved to forbid sign language and mandate oralism.
Filippo Smaldone lived from 1848 to 1923 in Italy, and the infamous Milan Conference was held in 1880. According to one source, he founded “institutes for deaf-mutes” (not necessarily a disparaging term back then) in 1885 and 1887, but he had already worked with “deaf-mutes” as far back as the 1870s. He might truly be worthy of sainthood if he had rebuked the Milan Conference and promoted deaf people’s preferred mode of communication, but somehow I doubt that happened, because that would have gone totally against the grain.
Just think what an irony it would be if our dear Father Smaldone had been one of the killers of sign language and “got away with murder” by being canonized as a saint!
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