Category: News

FCC Announces New Closed Captioned Complaint Rules

Image via Wikipedia Source: Deafnetwork On Friday, Feb. 19, 2010, two important new closed captioning rules were published in the Federal Register and went into effect. The new rules require immediate attention by video programming distributors — including broadcast television stations — to ensure that they respond promptly to viewer complaints regarding closed captioning issues, …

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Hearing Aid Tax Credit

Image via Wikipedia From [Hearing Aid Tax Credit web site](http://www.hearingaidtaxcredit.org/): What would the Hearing Aid Assistance Tax Credit Act do? And, what are the differences in the House and Senate legislation? The bill in the House of Representatives (H.R. 1646) would provide a tax credit towards the purchase of each hearing aid of up to …

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NCAM and Apple Publish "Creating Accessible iTunes U Content"

From Media Access Group at WGBH The Carl and Ruth Shapiro Family National Center for Accessible Media at WGBH (NCAM) has written guidelines for content providers who would like to create accessible iTunes U media via captions, subtitles and audio descriptions. This guidelines document provides step-by-step documentation on creating fully accessible media, including: – Closed …

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The Miracle Worker Revival Comes to Broadway

We know *The Miracle Worker* is a wonderful play about Helen Keller. We’ve come a long way since the 1962 movie starring Anne Bancroft and Patty Duke. Deaf actors have landed more roles even several were the stars of their own shows. (Marlee Matlin starred [Reasonable Doubts](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0101175/) in and Deanna Bray in [Sue Thomas: F.B.Eye](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0329934/).) …

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Index of Captioned Videos

If you’re like me, you search for captioned video on a per site basis. For example, you use [Hulu](http://www.hulu.com/search?query=dance&st=1)’s cc only caption feature, [Google Video](http://video.google.com/videoadvancedsearch)’s show captioned videos only feature and [YouTube](http://www.youtube.com/results?search_type=videos&closed_captions=1&search_query=dance)’s “closed captioned” type feature. Even these search tools are not perfect. For example, I added subtitles to all of [my YouTube videos](http://www.meryl.net/user/meke), but …

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HLAA Testifies Before Congress on Emergency Alerting Issues

From [Deafnetwork](http://deafnetwork.com/) By Lise Hamlin Director of Public Policy and State Development October 2, 2009 “This is NOT a test: Will the Nation’s Emergency Alert System Deliver the President’s Message to the Public?” That was the topic of a 3 ½ hour hearing before the US House of Representative’s Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, Subcommittee …

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NAD Calls out Netflix on Captions

From DeafNetwork. On September 9, 2009, the National Association of the Deaf requested that Netflix provide a captioned version of “The Wizard of Oz” movie that Netflix made available online, for free, for everyone on October 3, 2009. Netflix disregarded the NAD request along with thousands of letters, emails, comments, and tweets urging Netflix to …

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New York Mets Deaf and Hard of Hearing Awareness Day

Date: Saturday, October 3, 2009 at 1:10pm New York Mets vs. Houston Astros – A pre-game ceremony at home plate will honor key community supporters. – Each person will receive a Citi Field Inaugural Season Scroll Pen (with advance purchase through this flyer or group ticket window). – All deaf and hard of hearing supporters …

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HR 3101: Internet Captioning

Congress is working on HR 3101 known as the “21st Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act of 2009”, which would require making the internet more accessible using closed-captioning, real-time texting and video description. [NY Daily News](http://www.nydailynews.com/lifestyle/health/2009/09/01/2009-09-01_gov_bill_sends_the_digital_age_to_the_disabled_via_realtime_texting_and_other_in.html) reports, “The new bill would make closed captioning mandatory for large Internet television and movie distributors, excluding user-based sites …

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Beward Scam Targets Deaf

Just got the following email — brilliant. They’re targeting the deaf. Because of their ability to not only identify me as a deaf person, but they also mention “Texas” (my home state). They mention National Association for the Deaf (NAD). The email doesn’t request a bank account — nonetheless, ignore the email. Here’s an excerpt: …

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