Jared Evans Global Microbrand

I see this as one of the evolutionary steps towards automatically created voice-to-text transcripts that will eventually offer great benefit for both Deaf people and search engines.

Last month, Google Research included the voice-to-text capability on the “You Choose ‘08” page on the U.S. presidential race. On the “You Choose ‘08″ page, scroll down a bit to “What did the candidates say?” and you can search for a keyword in transcripts of what the candidates said inside video clips. If you move your mouse over the yellow markers on the video timeline, you’ll see a short text summary with the keyword.

Google Research admits that the automatic transcripts aren’t perfected yet, still I would like to be able to click a link to read the whole transcript. I would imagine that the next step in this evolution would be timecoding the transcript and offer an option to view the the subtitles directly near the bottom of the video clip as it’s being played.

As the co-founder of DeafRead.com which aggregates over 600 Deaf vbloggers, I’m often asked, “When is the best day or time to post a vblog entry for the highest view count?” My answer was based upon a rough estimation from my observations over time of DeafRead views. I’ve noticed that Thursday afternoons tend to give off the best results.

I just discovered this post by Jake Luciani, who did software analysis using 10,000 posts from delicious, digg, reddit and mixx and ran them all thru aiderss feed api.

His conclusion: between 1pm and 3pm PST (after lunch) or between 5pm and 7pm PST (after work) are the best times and Thursday is the best day. The worst time to post? Between 3 and 5 PM PST on the weekends – nobody cares.

The vblog posts on DeafRead continue to be clicked upon for 1-2 days, so posting one day earlier on a Wednesday may lead to higher overall view count with Thursday as a boost.

At the DeafRead 2008 conference, I gave a presentation titled: “Leveraging your v/blog: Build your online reputation and become a search engine darling!”

I covered the basics of why it’s important to take into consideration how well your blog plays with search engines. I go into details about the action to take and changes you can make so that your blog can be meaningfully analyzed by search engines. Paying close attention to your online reputation is a big part in getting listed in top search results. This is called Search Engine Optimization (SEO).

The slides of my presentation were wordy on purpose so that no one had to take notes during my presentation and anyone who could not make it to the conference can still get most of the information.

If you don’t have PowerPoint installed on your PC, you can use the free PowerPoint viewer to view the slideshow. Click on the image below to download the PowerPoint presentation.

DeafRead is practically a self-run system (with some help to nudge it forward) composed of a collective of Deaf v/bloggers from across the entire spectrum of Deafhood.  This nascent system has started to crystallize and take on specific characteristics that are unique to the online Deaf community and her culture.

While it’s interesting to see how the low degree of separation between the v/bloggers has an impact on the on-going dialog and debates, one thing has caught my eye:  this exclusively online community has grown to a point where it attracts other elements also seen in the larger world of Internet, but with an uniquely Deaf twist.

We now have our first resident Deaf blog spammer who is aggressively promoting a subscribers based website: DeafRomance, which can be seen in the comments of many Deaf v/blogs.  While I detest spam in any form, I thought that the emerging spammer was an interesting, albeit reluctantly logical outcome of this evolving online system inclined towards a specific set of characteristics.  I guess the motivation to aggressively market and hoard the almighty dollar is not lost upon the Deaf :-)

This collective of Deaf v/bloggers may yield many research topics for the aspiring student majoring in cultural anthropology.  Any takers out there?

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Paddy Ladd granted me his permission to reprint his email for a call to arms to fight a bill currently going through the rounds in the UK.  Grumpy Old Deafies first broke the news about the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill.  The bill as it currently stands is if a couple has an embryo that is found to be a carrier of the deaf gene, they will not be able conceive with the embryo, and will be forced to find another embryo that is not known to have any “abnormality”.

To my knowledge, this may represent the first genetics-based assault upon the Deaf. This bill smacks of eugenics in the name of improving the human race by hearing people deciding what makes up a normal human being.  Who is to say that being deaf is an abnormality?  If they (the hearing) saw how there is absolutely no barriers for the Deaf when sign language is used and we can have normal lives, this bill to outlaw the deaf gene is not necessary at all.  Do you see the majority of Deaf people running off to the nearest hospital to get an cochlear implant?  They don’t and there is a reason for that- we don’t find it necessary to function in the world.  This viewpoint of life should be respected by the Hearing establishment and not be interfered upon by bills such as this one.

If this bill passes in the UK, you can bet that there will be similar one that will be proposed in America within a few years.  It would be great if many people of the American Deaf community, including all organizations such as NAD, Deaf-based Agencies, State and Alumni Associations all show our support to the British Deaf as they face down this bill being pushed forward by the unthinking politicians/scientists.   They should not be alone in this.

We should stand behind them now because before you know it, we will be seeing the same thing on our own soil.

——– Paddy Ladd email ——————
Dear People,

Please forward this to everybody you know, and read the blog also. [link is above]

This is a very serious situation that no-one seems {again} to have been paying attention to.

Clearly serious lobbying needs to be established fast, and this is where hearing allies can have a specially important role, especially in contacting any relevant politicians/media allies. Ideally, letters from as many organisations and individuals as can be mustered, sent to whichever Lords are in a position to act on this, would be the minimum act of lobbying.

It also needs rapid intervention by the BDA, the EUD, the WFD, Deaf Studies personnel, national and *international*, and soon. I do not have email addresses for many of these.

It is also important to know what such organisations as RNID, UKCOD, NDCS and CACDP are doing to lobby against [or even for !] this amendment, and if the latter, to work to change this.

There also needs be a central person/group for these responses to be focused around. Sorry that can’t be me as I am overwhelmed with stuff already.

Thanks,
PL

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It was a year ago when Tayler and I released DeafRead into the wild.  I still vividly remember the seven days prior to the launch when we stayed up late into the night banging away on keyboard.  We kept bouncing many ideas off each other and materializing it all into programming code as fast as we could.

The first iteration of the DeafRead site was a far cry from what you see today.  Right before it was released, it was mostly functional with minimal features and had several bugs that remained to be squashed.  At first, I was a bit hesitant to release it in a such raw form but Tayler was all "Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead!"  Since DeafRead was a free site that was based upon all-volunteer effort, the site didn’t have to be in a such pristine shape.  I obliged Tayler and gave my go-ahead for the launch.

We gathered together a small group of "first wave" Deaf v/bloggers who had been blogging long before DeafRead was conceived.  These early Deaf bloggers simply blogged because they enjoyed doing that on their own without the existence of a popular blog centralization site to bring additional eyeballs.

We started with four bloggers that morning and continued to add few more throughout the day.  During the following week, we were giddy with success when we saw a popular post get 30 views in a single day.  Nowadays, hot v/blog posts can easily get hundreds of views within a hour!

Little did we imagine how far DeafRead would come!  DeafRead came into its own during the Gallaudet protest when it served as a central repository of diverse posts covering all the minute details of the UFG protest.  We were able to bring in Deaf blogs from all over the cyberspace onto an easily accessible page so that everyone could know where to go for more information.  No longer did people have to search everywhere to find Deaf blogs covering the Gallaudet protest. 

The success of DeafRead can be seen our base of loyal visitors/bloggers/vloggers who have spread the word of DeafRead far and wide.  We have been mentioned in a number of articles and major newspapers.  Thanks to our sponsor, Hawk Relay, we were able to transfer DeafRead to a powerful server capable of handling spikes in traffic without skipping a beat.  We are indeed ready for the big time!

I am most grateful for the amazing group of four dedicated DeafRead human editors who have sorted through thousands upon thousands of blog and vlog posts to bring out the interesting posts touching the Deaf world and her culture.  Your effort is appreciated by many of us who frequently visit the junk-free DeafRead pages.  Carrie, JJ, Amy, and Elizabeth, thank you so much for all your hard work and the time that you spent moderating the posts!  It’s no easy task to deal with a site which involves a bewildering assortment of personalities and invites heated debates on many occasions. Your perseverance in moderating is doubly appreciated!

Last of all, DeafRead would have never gotten this far without the all the Deaf and hearing v/bloggers to whom we subscribe.  It’s all of you who made DeafRead into a tour de force.   In a year’s time, we have collectively produced more timely content than any other magazines or newspapers could afford to create.  Each blogger and vlogger can claim ownership of their content and be recognized for their hard work.  We are happy to link a short summary of your content and drive more eyeballs to your sites.  We are interested in helping each of you to build your own audience of fans who will come back to your blogs in the future via direct RSS subscriptions and make all your hard work worthwhile.

Everyone has their own unique preferences and tastes. We strive to provide diverse content that will be enjoyed by all kinds of visitors/viewers.

Here’s to opening the eyes of the world to what Deaf people are really like.  It’s been an amazing and wild journey so far.  Let’s see where we go in the next year!

A while ago, Tayler Mayer and I met with Dan McClintock at Feast on This for lunch to do an interview for SigNews. We talked about how the website of DeafRead.com came to fruition, our experience in running the website, and why the website resonates with many DeafReaders (I love that term!).

I didn’t have a flatbed scanner, so I used my digital camera to take snapshots of the article so that you may read for yourself!  If you want to get a free issue of SigNews to see if you want to become one of their subscribers, visit this link.

[click on the thumbnails to see the full-sized images]

This is the draft that I followed for my presentation at the b/vlogging for the Future of Gallaudet last Saturday.  Since they are just rough notes for me to peek at during the presentation, they don’t follow the standard written English rules.

Since I was allotted only 15 minutes for my presentation, I had to cut out several parts when my time was just about up.  The notes show my presentation in its entirety.

——————-
As a Deaf person, the year 2006 marks when everything changed.  Before 2006, all I could do was to complain and find ways to work around Deaf issues that face me everyday and not being able to realistically expect solutions.  After 2006, I feel I can help make positive changes take place.  Why?  Empowerment!

Why do people now prefer blogs over emails?

Emails are very ineffective way to distribute information.  Emails are stuck within closed systems.  Mass emails are limited to your circle of contacts.  Highly dependent upon your circle to forward it to their circles of contacts- could take a few days if they aren’t around to read emails or take their time to forward if they read it at all.  Can you imagine how differently the protest would be affected if many protest news were 3-4 days old in your email box?  Not search engine friendly- would you allow search engines to index you emails for the world to read? (of course not!)  The information inside emails are "locked" away.

Blogs/Vlogs- more effective way to distribute information: a place where all interested ones can get the news at the exactly same time. Very search engine friendly so others can search for it later on.  RSS feeds of blogs allow people to track and be instantly alerted when there’s something new to read. You can easily embed visual information such as pictures and videos inside blogs. Very efficient way to distribute information to many people at once.

Two real life examples of the power of blogs:
The famous story of the "so-called" tough Kryptonite bike locks, which were vulnerable to be picked with a cheap plastic pen.  Many blogs picked up this and talked about it for days but the corporation didn’t listen or response in a timely manner which made their products more undesirable as days crawled by.  They could have immediately acknowledged this serious deficiency and responded that they were working on creating a plan for the fixed product with their factories, fulfillment, shipping, and registration for the product to be replaced.

Before blogs arrived on the scene, Companies and their PR department were used to the rules of the old guard media.  The customers could be safely ignored or held at bay because communication would only be done via Press Releases and in articles of the mainstream media.  Their power and control has been disrupted as blogs became mainstream.  If enough customers stand up and express their concerns, they have the power to get the word out to many others and companies need to start to respect this new change and engage in a two-way conversation to show that they are valuing their customers.

There is an upside for the Companies!  This is another way to build up a strong loyalty of their current customer base and attract many new ones.

Example of securing customer loyalty via the blogs: Many Microsoft employees are blogging now. Customers can transparently follow new products in development or be able to contact employees for more information regarding products and even help them arrive at solutions!

Before: Big evil empire because no one really knew what was going on behind the closed doors and could only guess at what they were thinking and planning. Now: transparent to everyone and very customer friendly.

Time to open up Gallaudet to the world to see what the happens here among students, faculty, staff, and administration.  Let them all start their own Gallaudet blogs.  Who is doing research and on what?  Have a point person here who has the authority to interview them all and show the world the exciting things that happen here.  Allow feedback and questions from the world in form of comments on the blogs.  Allow new ideas to florish and be explored.  Let the world see and be impressed by what is happening here on this campus.   I’ve talked with several outstanding faculty here such as Ben Bahan and Sue Mather.  The kind of enjoyable conversations that I had with them were very enlightening and gave me a better understanding of the language and culture.  There are a lot of exciting information that people here on this campus can share with the rest of the world.  Blogs are the key to unlocking this treasure trove.  The resulting enthusiasm will be infectious for everyone involved.

This significant change is one that Gallaudet must undertake for the 21st century to remain a powerhouse for the future Deaf community.  Change is the only constant in life.  Davila, despite being 74 years old, has shown that he accepts and enjoys change and is still willing to try new things.  That is something you don’t see often with older people who have become used to the same way of life.  I hope that when I’m 74, I’ll still be as receptive to new changes in life as he is. 

DeafRead is here to help Gallaudet move forward.

Our ultimate goal: If you look at the history of Deaf people, we want a return to the pre-1880 era where Deaf people were matter-of-factly a part of the world.  We want to see again the respecting co-existence between Deaf and Hearing people.

After attending the Deafhood workshops, I came to see that most of the upcoming technology for the Deaf is generally used to "treat" Deafness from a pathological view and has a role in promoting the colonizing of the Deaf by those that have the wrong kind of mindset.

I realized that the technology of DeafRead is different. it’s the opposite. It’s a de-colonizing technology and encourages Deaf people to celebrate who they are.

MLK from his "I’ve been to the mountaintop" speech: Egyptian Pharaohs had a favorite way to prolong the period of slavery: Keeping the slaves fighting among themselves.  By forcing their attention and energy on each other, they were too worn out to fight back for true freedom.  When the slaves got together, Pharaoh couldn’t hold them in slavery.  That is the beginning of getting out of slavery.

This is why DeafRead brings in many viewpoints now, both positive and negative.  we need to first see this infighting among ourselves, start to recognize that, find a way to come to terms with each other and arrive at a solution that is acceptable to everyone.  Once we start to get together as a group, it will be the beginning to get out of the prision that we put ourselves into.

But our struggle is more difficult because we are more masked than the blacks.  We are the invisible minority because people can’t simply see who is Deaf or Hearing. "Out of sight, Out of mind." Very difficult to get our message out to the unknowing hearing world.

Before DeafRead, there were a few scattered Deaf bloggers who were on their own among the millions of hearing bloggers.  During the first spring protest of 2006, Three of them (Ridor, Elisa, and DeafDC) managed to rise above the fray and be seen by many Deaf people.  They all both fed off each other and often sent traffic between each other in cycles.  There were other Deaf bloggers during this time, but they all went mostly unnoticed.

By the second fall protest of 2006, DeafRead was up and running and equalized the playing field for all Deaf bloggers.  The swarm of internet visitors now know where they can go to easily find more information among many more bloggers.  Deaf blogs could simply plug into DeafRead and have many thousands of eyeballs sent to their valuable information that is to be shared instantly with the rest of the world.

Instead of being isolated on the blogosphere and starting to playing off each other, the Deaf bloggers have evolved into what is our new "social media".  They are able to share their views on the same topics more easily and everyone can participate in the comments.  Gallaudet and other organizations such as NAD can work with the new social media to get the word out to the larger Deaf community.  Listening and talking opens the opportunity to gain new and fresh approaches to the many issues we struggle with daily.

DeafRead exists to make us be seen clearly by the world at large.  Let them see us engage in our dialogues, in beautifully formed written words that rivals any hearing bestselling authors, in beautiful sign language as we take advantage of 3-D space to impart our messages to the world that we the Deaf shall no longer be the silent people.

This open exposure to who we are as people will make it easier to bring more hearing people over to our side with a better understanding of us and our unique culture.

Deaf bloggers will lead the cultural charge for the undoing of the damage to Deaf people.  Onward and upward!

Greater visibility due to higher traffic
The sole purpose of DeafRead.com is to drive traffic to Deaf-centered blogs.  We make it very easy for people to track the blogs that are of great interest to the Deaf community. We believe that we have made significant inroads in helping to boost the traffic to several key blogs and we are starting to see some concrete benefits of greater visibility.  It goes to show that if you maintain a high quality blog, the swarm of readers will naturally find their way to you!

    * Mishka Zena made it as the #1 blog on Wordpress and beat out Robert Scoble, who is one of the most famous bloggers in the world!  This is nothing to sneeze at!
    * DeafDC.com blogs have been quoted several times in Washington Post.
    * Elisa and Ridorlive each broke 20,000 hits (which qualify them as "A-list" bloggers)
    * The traffic alone overwhelmed several blogs and put them out of commission. There were 47,000 hits within 3 hours plus all the hits that led up to the crashes!
    * DeafRead and several other Deaf blogs were mentioned on the PBS website regarding Deaf people’s newfound ability to harness the power of the blogs to fight back.

Most of the content came from a few blogs
It’s all the more amazing when you consider that it is only a small number of blogs (around 8) that have created the vast majority of the content as of late.  It’s been shown in research about the behavior patterns of Internet users that only 2% of the users are active in creating content for others to view/read.  This is not to say that the remaining 98% are merely passive observers but some of them could be influential people who can make more things happen based upon the information that they have digested via the blogs.

Live documentation of the movement
There is yet another unexpected benefit to all the Deaf blogging that has been happening lately. We are not only making history by adopting the power of networked blogs to engage in the toppling of an entrenched administration. We are also actively self documenting in real time all the minute details and the different perspectives of the Unity for Gallaudet movement!   By comparison, the seminal published documentation on the 1988 DPN movement, "The Week the World Heard Gallaudet" took about one year before the first copy was finally sold.

NAD stands to benefit from a new face of Deaf community
There is a great potential for the ascension of NAD into a powerful organization backed by the networked Deaf blogs willing to flex their muscles for the betterment of Deaf people everywhere.  It will take some time for these relationships to be developed organically and nurtured in this new political landscape with different power centers that can come together for similar purposes.  NAD must become a more nimble organization that can adapt easily if NAD wants to thrive in the rapidly changing environment.  They need to look closely at how the blogs are working together towards a goal and find a way to incorporate them in how NAD will pursue political actions in the future.  The NAD blogs could become some of the mainstay Deaf blogs mentioned above if they manage to understand their unique role and pull it off just right.

HIgher level of discourse
The networked blogs could take the discourse to a whole new level.  Up to now, we have always depended upon published works of Deaf culture books to spread new analysis and information about the state of the Deaf Community.  The pace of the cultivation of Deaf Culture has been slow like a snail due to the long wait of production and low visibility of the information locked inside the physical books. Deaf Blogs will move this process ahead at warp speed.

I’m even more impressed with Bob Davlia, the current interim president of Gallaudet.  He wasted no time in getting his own vlog up and running.

This is a huge and fantastic step for Gallaudet in my opinion: a president of an university taking the time to talk directly to the Gallaudet community and by extension the Deaf community on what he is doing to make it a better place.  His weekly vlog sends a powerful message that he’s determined to make his administration more transparent and show that other stakeholders are truly valued.

While there are many approaches to doing vlogs, I think that his chosen format is one of several ideal settings for a vlog by one of the higher-ups at an university.  I would also like to see him do several vlogs where he’s on a more personal rapport with the students, faculty, and staff.  There are many examples of CEOs of Fortune 100 companies who have been in vlogs that were much more amateurish than Bob’s vlog.  It’s not about being able to have a presentation of information in a controlled manner but about showing the ability to connect with others on a more basic level.

People will instinctively respond in very positive way when they see that Davila is willing to leave the Ivory tower and come to listen and talk directly with them.  This is a great start for Gallaudet!

Now… Bob… about that server with its intermittent performance for video downloading…

Babel is a movie with four different stories and one of the stories involves a deaf girl in Japan.  In the interest of being authentic, I strongly believe that deaf characters in movies should be played by people who are actually deaf in real life.  It sends the message that the director made every effort to find a qualified deaf person who can act in the role and to change the mindset of movie directors everywhere that deaf actors can do just as good a job as hearing people.

It’s difficult enough for deaf people to live in the land of Hollywood but to also take away the roles they would be perfect for and delegate them to hearing people who have so many other possible roles to chase after?

Interview with Babel’s Rinko Kikuchi.

This answer really made me cringe:
“I understood the sign language more as a body language, and it was really about using your hands in gestures and expressing the emotions. “

I have a suggestion to all those of you hoping to be one of the nominees for the DeafRead Blog Awards.

Please go through all your blog posts of 2006 and select about 5-10 blog posts that you think were the best ones.  List the titles along with the links.  This will make it much easier for people to see what your blog is all about and help them decide who they want to nominate for each of the categories.

There are several tough categories such as “Best single entry” and “Best video entry”  If many of you follow this suggestion, it will make it much easier on the rest of us.

The DeafRead editors will gladly post these entries.

I have just read three poignant posts by Sarah over at her blog at the8thnerve.com  (”Soltaire“, “New world“, “Sound and Fury“).  In her beautifully written blog posts, she recounts how after 28 years, she finally started to look at herself in a new light:

I was coming from a completely different frame of reference. It is like that saying: “We are not human beings having a spiritual experience, we are spiritual beings having a human experience.” This saying completely changes one’s frame of reference and if you really believe this saying, it could change the way you think and feel and live your life. My saying would be: “I am not a hearing person having a deaf experience, I am a deaf person having a hearing experience.”

She grew up alone in a non-signing mainstream program and it was not until recently when she realized how much she had missed out on in her life.  It all came crashing down on her one night and a flood of emotion overwhelmed her.  Already, as I can see in her latest blog post, she is determined to pick herself up and start to accept a new world that she has avoided for a long time.

It hit me hard because I came perniciously close to what she went through.  You see, I am another product of the mainstreamed programs too.  I could have very easily been the sole deaf soul in my schools with very limited exposure to other Deaf people.  I might have been able to still learn things well and get by with my hearing peers like Sarah did by finding ways to adapt to the hearing world.  I have been in many situtations like Sarah went through and I know all too well how it really suck to be the only deaf person in the room and not being able to understand anything that anyone is saying.

Fortunately, I was blessed to be in one of the best mainstreamed programs: there were a good number of well-adjusted Deaf students while I grew up in mainstreamed program in elementary/middle/high schools (View Ridge, Eckstein, and Roosevelt in Seattle, WA).  In addition to the Deaf students, my high school mainstream program was also run by a Deaf woman (who graduated from Gallaudet) and had several outstanding sign language interpreters.

It was not until I went to NTID/RIT when I met other solitaires who were alone in their respective mainstream program.  It finally drew upon me that I was indeed one of the lucky ones and finally realized why many mainstreamed programs get the bad rap that they do among Deaf people who knew better.

Her posts underscores the importance of us who have been lucky to be been raised up in a signing and Deaf-friendly environment to welcome all the solitaires into our fold.  It’s only out among us the signing Deaf that the solitaires will be able to become fully actualized beings. It’s when they finally have no-barrier communication with other people that they will be able to fully express who they are. Their initial deficiency in skillfully using the American Sign Language can be easily remedied in matter of months if we make it easier for them to socialize with us.

Welcome to your new world, Sarah.  I know it will be difficult at first but I hope it’ll be a journey that you will never regret.

(Jared and Tayler shortly before midnight NYE)

While any “Person of the Year” award is certainly subjective and open to debate, it’s always heartwarming to get some kind of acknowledgement that DeafRead is being seen as making significant contribution to help bring together the Deaf community in a new way and pave the path for our future.

Tayler had some tough competition for the “Deaf Person of the Year”
award- There is Mishka Zena, the emergent queen of the DeafBlogLand,
Elisa Abenchuchan for all her countless entries during the protest, and
even Janes Fernandes herself as being the center of the 2006 Deaf
firestorm.  Sometimes the “Person of the year” doesn’t have to be an
actual person: it could have been the FSSA and all her tent cities or
the DeafBlogLand as a whole.  What’s my personal take on all this?  My line of reasoning is this:  It’s been generally recognized that the new world of blogs run by the Deaf has been a tremendous source of information and assistance for the most significant 2006 event in the Deaf community.  With DeafRead as the new centralized location of all these blogs, the overall effect was multiplied many times over.  Without a website like DeafRead running in the background, there would not be much exposure to many existing blogs and we would not see new ones hatched in the process.  I’ve seen many Deaf people change how they see things and start to think more critically about themselves. For me, that is what clinched the win for Tayler Mayer as the “Deaf person of the year”.

When Tayler first approached me about the idea of starting up a filtered blog aggregator targeted at the Deaf Community, I could instantly see how useful it would be, especially in the light of the upcoming protest that would take place at Gallaudet that fall.  After spending countless hours with Tayler on developing code for the site, we had certain expectations about DeafRead.  I’m happy to say that it has exceeded all our wildest hopes and I’m hoping that DeafRead will help to fuel a explosion of more Deaf-centered blogs in 2007!

Tayler and I go a long way back to our days at NTID/RIT and I’m proud that still after all this time, I still keep company with him as we continue to provide a mechanism to make it easy for Deaf people to be “heard” in this world.

My hat’s off to you, Tayler!

Recently, the NBC Today show talked about the IP Relay with an unbalanced view.  They focused too much on the negative aspects of the service (scammers) while ignoring the upsides that the relay service provides for the intended consumers: Deaf people who have many valid reasons to call other businesses or hearing people.

This one-sided nature of the story does nothing but make it more difficult for Deaf people to be able to keep these services running for the benefit of everyone.

Lori Whynot wrote an eloquent letter to the Today Show which I thought was worth reading.

The question now is:  Should there be a forced registration for the users of IP Relay so that these scammers can be prevented from abusing the service?

Jared
——————————–
From: lwhynot911 < lwhynot911@yahoo.com >
Subject: Yesterday’s Today Show- IP relay story

HI all, not sure if you saw the IP relay story on NBC’s Today show, but I wrote the following letter to the show in response. They exposed the misuse and criminal activity that happens through IP relay. It’s a very interesting issue that brings up alot of thoughts about privacy, confidentiality and priviledged communication vs. exposing criminals. I find it important to consider the implications, especially how it applies to our work as interpreters.

-Lori Whynot
*********

To the producers at NBC’s “Today” show:

Hello there!
I have been a regular viewer of NBC “Today” show for many years. Yesterday morning I saw your story on the technology that allows Deaf people to communicate with non-Deaf people through IP relay operator services. There is also another, more popular technology that allows for Deaf people to use live interpreters via videophone – Video Relay Services (VRS), which is a similar telecommunications service funded by the FCC. I currently work for one of the largest VRS providers in the country as a part-time video relay interpreter. Not only does this service allow Deaf people to use their most naturally accessible visual language- American Sign Language- but it creates for almost seamless communication between someone who can hear and someone who is deaf.

I was definitely intrigued by Wednesday’s feature on “Today”, since I am a provider of a comparable service. The report on IP relay exposed the salacious side of some of the content that is communicated through these kinds of service, as well as real misuse by fraudulent people. However, I wish your producers had shown the prevailing GOOD side and benefits that these technologies offer to Deaf people who have been marginalized and left-out in our societies for years. Any service that levels the playing field for Deaf people to participate equally in their communities creates many more good results than bad ones. The fact is, anyone can be subjected to fraud via telephone or internet communications, and unfortunately some of our most unsuspecting citizens are victimized. I’ve seen this firsthand as I am a professional American Sign Language (ASL) interpreter with over 16 years of experience. The information that goes through my head and hands daily is priviledged, meaning I would not have access to it if not for the fact that it is my JOB to help people communicate. For this reason, those priviledged communications are not mine to “own” or to regulate…just as any citizen in the country has a right to private communication.

NBC’s IP relay story seemed to imply that something should be done to stop this fraudulent use of FCC-funded technology. I agree that such misuse is a bad thing, but how can this be done without jeopardizing Deaf citizens’ access to equal participation and communication in their communities? I have alot of mixed feelings about the issue. It saddens me to see such a wonderful service tainted by a small number of criminals. At the same time, all Americans have a right to privacy and to not have their phone lines or communications ‘tapped”. Furthermore, people have a “right” to live their lives freely, informed or uninformed about the reality of fraudulent activities and to not fall victim to such scams. Perhaps one approach could be to educate people about the potential to be victimized, without making it difficult for an authentic Deaf- to- non-Deaf relay communication to happen.

So many wonderful things get communicated between people everyday, just as there are some not-so-wonderful messages that people exchange, whether it be through a third-party or not. Fraudulent activities, scams and crimes have been happening for years. There are and will always be dishonest people who do dishonest things. It’s just that now third-party communications technology allows a clear view of such activities- by those of us in a precarious, priviledged position, who are responsible for maintaining confidentiality and privacy. If we turn to the FCC to ask that technology-based telecommunications services like IP relay or VRS be regulated more closely or that private, priviledged communications across them be subject to scrutiny and potential punishment, that creates a dilemma for me as a professional. My professional code of conduct requires that I hold such communications as confidential, and to not interfere with the message that is being communicated.

I agree that something must be done to quell such abuse of a wonderful technology. I am not sure the answer at this time, but I recognize the importance of reducing crime, while weighing carefully all the issues and potential affects of interfering with private communications. I only hope that the next time your producers do a feature like this you would show the FULL picture of what such telecommunications are doing daily for Deaf citizens, and not just spin a very negative, sensationalized view that almost encourages public outcry to eliminate them because of a few ‘bad apples”.

-Lori A. Whynot, M.A., CI/CT
Interpreter, Trainer, Mentor
San Diego, CA

When I visited this video link over at youTube when I was looking around for videos about Deaf and Blogs,  it was flagged as inappropiate but I couldn’t see any reason why it would be.

After reading the comments, it seemed like an ASL user flagged the video as inappropiate under the assumption that the video was making fun of sign language.  It was incomprensible to the ASL user because the person in the video was actually signing in BSL!

I couldn’t help but laugh about it.