By Visual Means: Benefit of ASL in early childcare

By Visual Means: Benefit of ASL in early childcare

Benefit of ASL in early childcare

Found this great article.  All the more reason to push for use of the visual language in child's early years.
http://www.lifeprint.com/asl101/topics/the-benefits-of-american-sign-language.htm

Rules that excludes the Deaf from certain careers.

The other day I was talking with my girl friend and she was telling me about someone who wanted to work on a cruise line but was denied at the very last minute because of a rule that the Coast Guard had in place. I found this article
Coast Guard changed rules and thought that this was one good example of where we should remove barriers in rules and regulation so opportunities are not denied.

So is there a reason why, I as a Deaf citizen of the United States of America, can not join the Army/Navy/Air Force and move up in rank? Is there rules there that explicitly states that you have to have normal hearing or vision in order to be a marine/general/cadet? There are plenty of services that the Army does that can be subsituted with a visual language(morse code comes to mind). People who carry supplies to the troop is one such service. My father was a butcher in the Korean War serving the Top Boss in Germany. A Deaf person can do the same. Here another article that touch on this subject (Deaf unable to enlist)

How about being a doctor or a nurse? Wouldn't it be nice if I could be seen by a Deaf Doctor or Nurse. Naturally there are all kinds of nurses, including those that work with patients that are non-verbal or work in the lab. I did some searching and came across this web site (Assocation of Medical Professional with Hearing Loss). So we just need to put up a fight to make changes.

What about teachers in mainstream programs? Are teachers who are deaf excluded because of some rule that states they need to hear?

I've heard there was some rules regarding driving an 18 wheeler. Looks like the CDL (Commerical Driver License) requires you to have good hearing. Why is that? If we can drive a car, then how different is that than driving an 18 wheeler?

In general, there are probably a lot of regulations that need to be changed.

Captioning and DBC

I'm a strong supporter of captioning of web video and I'm also a strong supporter of the cause of the Deaf Bilingual Coalition(DBC). The more I think about these causes, I realized how captioning can help the cause of DBC. I see often times where we are deprived of captioning of web video that entirely in the spoken language and we should continue to advocate for the rights to appreciate them. Take for instance a post by a friend of mine who happened to be Deaf and also know the words to one of John Denver's song by heart. She took upon herself to caption the song. Now this brings joy to my heart.
Earlier I stated captioning can help the cause of DBC. We are so bent sometimes on ensuring our rights to captioning but sometimes we forget the rights of Deaf children of hearing parents. Why don't we also advocate for the rights to literacy of Deaf children by exposing them to American Sign Language(ASL). One way we can do such is to advocate for the captioning of ASL video by saying all video of ASL to also be caption. I often times enjoy watching an ASL VLOG and thought this is an excellent story that the greater public should also know about, yet they will be deprived of it since it is not captioned. If we want to encourage hearing parent to learn ASL so they can also pass them on to their Deaf children, then we should demand that ASL video also be captioned for the hearing people. It should be a two way street for the greater needs of everyone.

Society of Deaf Computing Engineers

I'm contemplating on establishing a computer society where it's members are Deaf or supporters of the society. Here are some visions I have that will benefit from the establishment of such society.

1. Job Announcements/Resume bank for employer to view/post.
2. Discounts on Hardware/Software/Books/etc.
3. Creation of code camps and displaying the work of contributors.
4. Workshops where members can provide educational presentations to benefit members or the public.
5. And more...

It would more likely start out as a group and eventually become a 501c3 organization. Here are a few suggestion of the organization name.

A. Society of Deaf Computing Engineers
B. Deaf Computer Society

I sort of like the first choice but if you have a suggestion then feel free to send them this way.

Deaf Education and Literacy

Deaf Education and Literacy

There has been some means of measuring the progress of Deaf education and literacy but only in the form of some sort of estimation in scholar journal. I did some google search on statistical record keeping of progress in Deaf Education and Literacy and you can guess that there is very little materials. With more kids being mainstreamed, we have little means to collecting such statistics.
Does the US Department of Education have some form of requirement that schools are to keep track of all kids and their hearing loss? What about the type of tests they take to measure progress? We have the SAT and a number of other tests. Including specialized tests for the Deaf.
Are some required and others not? What about the communication method used in conveying the materials to the students?
Deaf Education has been around for a long time, yet we are no where close to providing the means of what works and what doesn't work. Are we going to continue down the path of blindly educating our Deaf students without the tools that are effective?
I know there are a lot of questions here and I'm hoping people will either verify that no such means of measuring the progress of Deaf education or literacy exists or point me to where such statistical data reside for observation.