A Deaf Mississippian Cheers For the Seahawks

Image of Derrick Coleman from Seahawks.com

One Mississippian will be cheering for the Seahawks during the Super Bowl--she's deaf just like the team's fullback, Derrick Coleman. Callie Daniels writes, "It’s a relief for me to see someone else who gets it and also shares with the public all the struggles we, the deaf or hard of hearing, have faced. No matter where we grew up or what we did with our lives, we all had the quiet stress of frantically lip-reading a person who mumbles, the cold dread of our batteries dying in middle of an important conversation and the learned endurance of listening to someone who talks to us as if we were all in a Special Education class. I snickered when Coleman said he turns off his hearing aids whenever he encountered a rude person." Read the full story of why Callie calls Coleman her hero here.

Interpreters for the deaf tell of their role

One of the students taking the Issues in Interpreting course at the National Technical Institute for the Deaf says interpreters have to be careful because "People's lives can be impacted in a devastating way" as a result of poor interpretation. Read the full story in the Democrat and Chronicle here.

School gets $1 million gift

An anonymous donor is giving one million dollars to California's Fresno State. The money is designated for helping families with deaf children who have other special needs. The money will be distributed through a program started by deaf studies professor Paul Ogden. This isn't the first gift intended to provide services for families with deaf children. The school got a $1.5 million gift and another $2 million gift a couple of years ago. And last year the Education department gave the school more than a million dollars. Read more about the most recent gift here.

How NY mayor's terp got his job

screenshot from YouTube

The sign language interpreter for New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio got national attention last fall after a news conference about Ebola. New Yorkers saw Jonathan Lamberton again when the Mayor spoke about the potential blizzard that could affect the city. The Village Voice got to checking on how Lamberton got the job in the first place. Read the full story about the California native who graduated from Gallaudet and ended up getting a position next to the New York mayor here.

Are Smartphones killing off deaf social clubs?

"Before technology made things easier, sign language users would drop in to deaf clubs so they could have conversations with those who spoke the same language as them," William Mager writes. But things have changed and the producer of the show See Hear speculates as to why things have changed. Read the full story here.

Voice messages into Text

Facebook is testing a new feature as part of its Messenger app that allows you to automatically convert voice messages into text. “We already offer a feature that enables people to send voice clips to their friends without having to type out the text. Today we are starting to roll out a small test that helps people read the voice clips they receive instead of having to play them out loud,” wrote the vice president of Messaging. If the testing goes well, Facebook will make it more widely available. Read the announcement here.

School Museum packed with history

A museum at the New Mexico School for the Deaf tells the story of this institution that opened its doors in 1885. Read about the small museum packed with 130 years’ of history at the The Santa Fe New Mexican here. There's information from the school about visiting the museum here.

Hearing through your tongue

Researchers claim they have combined a Bluetooth earpiece with a retainer--a special retainer, to be able to transmit information that the brain will understand as sound. The Colorado State University team says when the wearer presses the tongue to the retainer, their device skips the ear altogether. There's a news release here. Below is a video about the "tongue mapping" research underway at Colorado State.

Meet a VSDB staff member

Chris Bo Payne loves his job at the Virginia School for the Deaf and the Blind. He tells the Staunton Virginia News, "I was thrilled by the opportunity to return to a school that had played such a big part in giving me a fulfilling life. I am now dorm monitor for students ages 8-13. I love every minute of my job." Read the full story here.

Tickets & Seating an issue in OK

Members of the Deaf community are expressing their frustration with the Bank of Oklahoma Center in Tulsa, Oklahoma. The arena forces deaf ticket buyers to sit in places where they can either watch the stage or the interpreter but not both at the same time. KJRH-TV has a report on what's being done to make changes here.