Jennie Bourgeois» Jennie Bourgeois

Online Informational Videos About Hearing Loss

Jennie — Wed, 25 Aug 2010 10:34:23 +0000

Hearing Loss Association of America has produced a terrific series of seven (7) videos about hearing loss and has made this information available on their website.

http://www.hearingloss.org/learn/hearingloss_vids.asp

Get accurate information about hearing loss, its causes and what to do about it. The Hearing Loss Association of America contracted with Knowlera Media to produce a series of seven, four-minute, captioned videos on hearing loss. Information you need to be adequately briefed on the topic is all in one place in an easy-to-access format. If you think you have a hearing loss or know someone who does, please point them to the videos where hearing health care professionals and people with hearing loss talk about what you can do about it.

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Sign Language in Space — from NASA

Jennie — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 23:02:51 +0000

Watch this video from NASA of an astronaut signing in space!

CLICK HERE

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Jennie — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 16:07:37 +0000

Self-Advocacy for High School Students with Disabilities

NEW PODCAST SHOW

from the DISABILITY LAW LOWDOWN

February 11, 2010 – The Disability Law Lowdown podcast just posted a podcast about self-advocacy for high school students with disabilities. Jacquie Brennan discusses a new information sheet published by the Pacer Center (www.pacer.org) that provides valuable information for high schoolers about how to plan for their future by taking an active role in IEP meetings and transition planning, whether the transition is to employment, post-secondary education, or independent living. It is so important that students learn to advocate for themselves so that goals that are set, and plans that are made, include the desires of the student and not just those around the student.

The Disability Law Lowdown podcast is available at www.DisabilityLawLowdown.com, as well as on iTunes. People can listen to the podcast directing from a computer or can download it to an MP3 player, like an iPod.

The Disability Law Lowdown provides the latest information about disability rights and obligations under the Americans with Disabilities Act, and other disability-related topics. Subscription is free.

The Disability Law Lowdown is a project of the national network of ten ADA Centers across the country, offering technical assistance and training in the Americans with Disabilities Act and other disability-related laws. Contact the Center that serves you by calling 1.800.949.4232 v/tty. The Disability Law Lowdown is available in English, Spanish, and American Sign Language.

To subscribe or listen to archived podcasts visit DisabilityLawLowdown.com

###

Transition 101: High School to Adulthood (slideshare.net)

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Deaf Culture Question of the Week

Jennie — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 15:14:16 +0000

: Image via Wikipedia

Feb. 8-12, 2010
Bill Newell, Principal Washington School for the Deaf

“Deaf people can do everything except hear.”

Many readers of Deaf Culture Question of the Week are probably
familiar with that famous expression by I. King Jordan, past
president of Gallaudet University.

Two weeks ago in DCQW the convention related to
writing about people who do not hear using either a capital
“D” Deaf or a lower case “d” deaf was explained.

To review, Deaf with a capital “D” means “identifying with
and belonging to a linguistic and cultural minority group.

Lower case “d” deaf refers to the condition of hearing loss. So
when one writes “deaf person/people” it means a person who has a
hearing loss. And when one writes “Deaf person/people” it means a
person belonging to and identifying with Deaf culture.

So now to the question of the week.

Let’s change the quotation just a little. Suppose we add an
“And,… as the first word of the sentence. When you read that
sentence which meaning do you attach to it?

a. And, Deaf people can do everything except hear. (An
affirmation that people belonging and identifying with Deaf
culture can succeed.)
b. And, deaf people can do everything except hear. (An
affirmation that people belonging to a disability group can
succeed.)

******************************

Answer: This exercise shows that the meanings of things are
socially constructed. Each individual interprets what they read,
hear or see based on their life experiences, background
knowledge, values and perceptions. Possibly a Deaf Culture
Question of the Week reader who is Deaf (identifies with Deaf
culture and uses American Sign Language) will interpret I. King
Jordan’s quotation as an affirmation of Deaf culture. Possibly a
reader who considers him/herself hearing impaired (deaf and
belonging to a disability group) will interpret the quotation as
an affirmation that people challenged by the disability of
deafness can overcome these challenges. Hearing parents, friends,
allies, and those people who claim the privilege of working with
d/Deaf people will each have their own interpretation. We cannot
really know what I. King Jordan meant to communicate.
What do you think he meant?

Which meaning do you think I. King Jordan had in mind when he
said “Deaf people can do everything except hear!” We can’t tell
because the rules of capitalization in English require the first
word of a sentence to start with a capital letter.

There is another possibility. The convention in the answer d/Deaf
would cover both meanings. But we still don’t know what I. King
Jordan actually intended.

Note: Previous DCQW are located at our WSD website.

Click Here

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IRS Videos in ASL Available on YouTube

Jennie — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 22:22:13 +0000

: Image via Wikipedia

With tax season in full swing, did you know that deaf and hard of hearing consumers can find answers to their tax questions directly from the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) in American Sign Language (ASL)?

The IRS has built a YouTube channel complete with a series of ASL videos—that are also voiced and captioned—on a myriad of tax topics, including e-File and Direct Deposit, Free File and Fillable Forms, Education Tax Credits, Unemployment Compensation and Home Energy Credits. ASL videos on many more important subjects for taxpayers will be added as they become available.

Just go to the IRS YouTube channel here http://www.youtube.com/user/IRSvideosASL to see ASL videos that will help you complete your taxes this year. You can post and share these videos through your websites, vlogs or other social network venues. Click on the subscriptions button at the top of the YouTube page and you can find out right away when future videos become available.

IRS expanding video options (myventurepad.com)
IRS offers tax tips on YouTube (seattletimes.nwsource.com)
Disabled World Creates New Disability Video Section (prweb.com)
IRS offers tax tips on YouTube in English, Spanish and American Sign Language (taragana.com)
The Best New IRS Tax Deductions And Credits (huffingtonpost.com)

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Captioning on Hulu

Jennie — Sun, 17 Jan 2010 22:09:06 +0000

Hulu now has a beta version available to search though the videos available that have captions.

To use Captions Search, select the “Captions” tab that appears under the video you’re watching and enter a word or phrase into the Captions Search box. From those results, you can hover over the thumbnail images on the left to preview the video, or click on a result to start playing the video from that point.

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Emergency Preparedness Information in ASL, Braille and Large Print

Jennie — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 22:54:10 +0000

WEBSITE: http://www.accessibleemergencyinfo.com

THe Northeast Texas Public Health District in cooperation with the Department of State Health Services have translated 18 Emergency Preparedness Topics into Videos with ASL translators, downloadable braille and large print documents, and pdf file downloadable documents.

Please visit http://www.accessibleemergencyinfo.com for more information and become better prepared for emergencies in your area. Surveys are requested to verify how well the information is serving your population, please take a moment to complette the survey before and after viewing the video information.

CONTACT PERSON NAME: Stephanie Walker
CONTACT EMAIL ADDRESS: accessibleemergencyinfo@gmail.com
CONTACT TELEPHONE #: (903) 729-7780

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YouTube Adds Machine Generated Automatic Captions

Jennie — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 22:04:25 +0000

YouTube clips have previously allowed for captioning, but it was a system that was a little buggy and only worked from YouTube’s site. That’s all changed with the advent of machine-generated captions and auto-timing.

Google’s automatic speech recognition (ASR) technology has been paired up with YouTube’s caption system to create automatic captions for the majority of the videos that are uploaded (at the rate of 20 hours of footage every minute). It should cover the needs of your caption viewing needs, although they’ll continue to streamline and improve this technology as things progress.

If you don’t want to leave the captioning of your video to the hands of the YouTube caption system, they’ve also added an auto-timing function, which allows you to upload a simple text file to be read. The text will sync up with your video without any timing breaks or coding added to the file. The previous system of captioning was mainly user generated and required a little professional know how when it comes to coding and video editing—thus, most videos were caption-less, making them inaccessible to those with hearing impairments.

For those who aren’t in need of captions, there’s still an added bonus for you. With the advent of all the new text in association with what’s on screen, it will make videos easier to search for and find, even if you don’t know the title.

Automatic Captions in YouTube [The Official Google Blog]

Send an email to Sarah Rae Trover, the author of this post, at tips@lifehacker.com.

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Automatic Captions in YouTube

Jennie — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 21:59:25 +0000

: Image via Wikipedia

11/19/2009

Since we first announced captions in Google Video and YouTube, we’ve introduced multiple caption tracks, improved search functionality and even automatic translation. Each of these features has had great personal significance to me, not only because I helped to design them, but also because I’m deaf. Today, I’m in Washington, D.C. to announce what I consider the most important and exciting milestone yet: machine-generated automatic captions.

Since the original launch of captions in our products, we’ve been happy to see growth in the number of captioned videos on our services, which now number in the hundreds of thousands. This suggests that more and more people are becoming aware of how useful captions can be. As we’ve explained in the past, captions not only help the deaf and hearing impaired, but with machine translation, they also enable people around the world to access video content in any of 51 languages. Captions can also improve search and even enable users to jump to the exact parts of the videos they’re looking for.

However, like everything YouTube does, captions face a tremendous challenge of scale. Every minute, 20 hours of video are uploaded. How can we expect every video owner to spend the time and effort necessary to add captions to their videos? Even with all of the captioning support already available on YouTube, the majority of user-generated video content online is still inaccessible to people like me.

To help address this challenge, we’ve combined Google’s automatic speech recognition (ASR) technology with the YouTube caption system to offer automatic captions, or auto-caps for short. Auto-caps use the same voice recognition algorithms in Google Voice to automatically generate captions for video. The captions will not always be perfect (check out the video below for an amusing example), but even when they’re off, they can still be helpful—and the technology will continue to improve with time.

In addition to automatic captions, we’re also launching automatic caption timing, or auto-timing, to make it significantly easier to create captions manually. With auto-timing, you no longer need to have special expertise to create your own captions in YouTube. All you need to do is create a simple text file with all the words in the video and we’ll use Google’s ASR technology to figure out when the words are spoken and create captions for your video. This should significantly lower the barriers for video owners who want to add captions, but who don’t have the time or resources to create professional caption tracks.

To learn more about how to use auto-caps and auto-timing, check out this short video and our help center article:

http://www.google.com/support/youtube/bin/answer.py?answer=100077

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kTvHIDKLFqc

You should see both features available in English by the end of the week. For our initial launch, auto-caps are only visible on a handful of partner channels (list below*). Because auto-caps are not perfect, we want to make sure we get feedback from both viewers and video owners before we roll them out more broadly. Auto-timing, on the other hand, is rolling out globally for all English-language videos on YouTube. We hope to expand these features for other channels and languages in the future. Please send us your feedback to help make that happen.

Today I’m more hopeful than ever that we’ll achieve our long-term goal of making videos universally accessible. Even with its flaws, I see the addition of automatic captioning as a huge step forward.

* Partners for the initial launch of auto-caps: UC Berkeley, Stanford, MIT, Yale, UCLA, Duke, UCTV, Columbia, PBS, National Geographic, Demand Media, UNSW and most Google & YouTube channels.

Posted by Ken Harrenstien, Software Engineer

Source: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/11/automatic-captions-in-youtube.html

YouTube Audio Transcription (mt-soft.com.ar)
Automatic captions in YouTube (googleblog.blogspot.com)
YouTube introduces automatic captions for the disabled (sfgate.com)
YouTube introduces automatic captions for the disabled (seattlepi.com)

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26 Charged in Nationwide Scheme to Defraud the FCC’s Video Relay Service Program

Jennie — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 15:37:57 +0000

Department of Justice Press Release

For Immediate Release
November 19, 2009

United States Attorney’s Office
District of Columbia
Contact: (202) 514-7566

Twenty-Six Charged in Nationwide Scheme to Defraud the FCC’s Video Relay Service Program
Arrests Made in Nine States

WASHINGTON—Indictments were unsealed today against 26 people charged with engaging in a scheme to steal millions of dollars from the Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC) Video Relay Service (VRS) program, announced Assistant Attorney General Lanny A. Breuer of the Criminal Division, Assistant Director of the FBI’s Washington Field Office Joseph Persichini Jr., Deputy Chief Postal Inspector Zane Hill, and FCC Chief of Staff Edward Lazarus.

Arrests were made today by FBI agents and Postal Inspectors in New York, New Jersey, Florida, Texas, Pennsylvania, Arizona, Nevada, Oregon, and Maryland and were the result of a joint FBI, U.S. Postal Inspection Service (USPIS), and FCC Office of Inspector General (FCC-OIG) investigation into a nationwide scheme to defraud the FCC’s VRS program.

“The individuals charged in connection with today’s operation are alleged to have stolen tens of millions of dollars from an important government program that is intended to help deaf and hard-of-hearing Americans communicate with hearing persons,” said Assistant Attorney General of the Criminal Division Lanny A. Breuer. “These defendants are alleged to have generated fraudulent call minutes by making it appear that deaf Americans were engaging in legitimate calls with hearing persons, when in reality, the defendants were simply attempting to steal money from an FCC program that is funded by every single American who pays their telephone bills. The Department of Justice will not stand by and let corporate executives and others line their pockets with money that should be used to help deaf Americans.”

“Unfortunately, this remarkable service, designed to help those in need, also provided a growth opportunity for criminal activity that we believe has cost American consumers tens of millions of dollars,” said Joseph Persichini, Jr., Assistant Director of the FBI’s Washington Field Office.

“When the U.S. Mail is used for the purposes of committing fraud, and in this case, a particularly insidious type of fraud, it’s the job of the Postal Inspection Service to aggressively investigate and ensure America’s confidence in the integrity of its postal system,” said Deputy Chief Postal Inspector Zane M. Hill.

“Today’s events represent both a tragedy and an opportunity,” said FCC Chief of Staff Edward Lazarus. “The tragedy is the unfortunate truth that a significant number of unscrupulous individuals, at great cost to the nation, have preyed on a very important program for delivering essential telecommunications services to persons with hearing disabilities. The ‘opportunity’ is the chance to reiterate our commitment to the VRS program and to follow through on efforts, already begun at the FCC, to safeguard the program against further waste, fraud, and abuse and to improve its delivery of VRS services to consumers.”

The indictments allege that 26 individuals engaged in a scheme to defraud the FCC by submitting false and fraudulent claims for VRS calls, causing the FCC to reimburse the defendants at a rate of approximately $390 per hour. According to the indictments, VRS is an online video translation service that allows people with hearing disabilities to communicate with hearing individuals through the use of interpreters and web cameras. A person with a hearing disability who wants to communicate with a hearing person can do so by contacting a VRS provider through an audio and video Internet connection. The VRS provider, in turn, employs a video interpreter to view and interpret the hearing disabled person’s signed conversation and relay the signed conversation orally to a hearing person. VRS is funded by fees assessed by telecommunications providers to telephone customers and is provided at no cost to the VRS user.

The indictments charge owners and employees of the following seven companies with engaging in a scheme to defraud the FCC’s VRS program:

Viable Communications Inc., of Rockville, Maryland;
Master Communications LLC, of Las Vegas;
KL Communications LLC, of Phoenix;
Mascom LLC of Austin, Texas;
Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing Interpreting Services Inc. (DHIS), of New York and New Jersey;
Innovative Communication Services for the Deaf Corp. (ICSD), of Miami Lakes, Florida.; and
Deaf Studio 29 of Huntington Beach, California.

Each of the indictments alleges that the defendants made, caused others to make, or processed fraudulent VRS calls that were then submitted to the FCC for reimbursement. These calls, often referred to as “r calls,” “rest calls” or “run calls,” served no purpose other than to generate call minutes that would be billed to the FCC’s VRS Fund.

In the first indictment, Viable Communications Inc. and four Viable executives have been charged with fraudulently generating VRS call minutes and obtaining reimbursements from the FCC for those calls. Viable owner and CEO John Yeh, 62, of Potomac, Maryland; Viable Chief Operating Officer Joseph Yeh, 64, of Potomac; Viable Assistant Vice President Anthony Mowl, 25, of Rockville, Maryland; and Viable Human Relations Director Donald Tropp, 25, of Rockville, have been charged in a six-count indictment with conspiracy to defraud the U.S. government and to submit false claims; submitting false claims; conspiracy to commit mail fraud; and mail fraud.

In the second indictment, Master Communications, KL Communications, and Mascom owners and employees have been charged with generating fraudulent VRS minutes. According to the indictment, these companies operated VRS call centers for Viable that generated and processed a large volume of fraudulent VRS calls, which were then submitted to the FCC’s TRS Fund Administrator for reimbursement. Master Communications, KL Communications and Mascom owner and employee Kim E. Hawkins, 46, of Las Vegas; Master Communications employee and KL Communications owner and employee Larry Berke, 62, of Phoenix; KL Communications employee Dary Berke of Phoenix; KL Communications and Master Communications employee Lisa Goetz, 43, of Phoenix; and Mascom Marketing and Advertising Director David Simmons, 43, of Austin; have been charged in a six-count indictment with conspiracy to defraud the U.S. government and to submit false claims; submitting false claims; conspiracy to commit mail fraud; and mail fraud.

In the third indictment, DHIS owners and employees have been charged with generating and processing a large volume of fraudulent VRS calls. According to the indictment, DHIS operated VRS call centers for Viable that generated and processed fraudulent VRS calls. DHIS co-owners Irma Azrelyant, 47, of Basking Ridge, N.J., and Joshua Finkle, 41, of New York; DHIS video interpreter Natan Zfati, 31, of Brooklyn, New York; DHIS bookkeeper Oksana Strusa, 35, of Jersey City, New Jersey; DHIS video interpreter Alfia Iskandarova, 29, of Brooklyn; and DHIS video interpreter Hennadii Holovkin, 36, of Philadelphia; have been charged in a six-count indictment with conspiracy to defraud the U.S. government and to submit false claims; submitting false claims; conspiracy to commit mail fraud; and mail fraud.

In the fourth indictment, ICSD owners and employees have been charged with generating and processing a large volume of fraudulent VRS calls. According to the indictment, ICSD operated VRS call centers for Viable that generated and processed a large number of fraudulent VRS calls. The indictment also alleges that ICSD owners and employees engaged in sham “marketing calls” for the stated purpose of marketing VRS services, but for the alleged true purpose of fraudulently generating additional VRS minutes. ICSD co-owners Yosbel Buscaron, 25, and Lazaro Fernandez, 35, both of Hialeah, Florida; ICSD call center manager Wanda Hutchinson, 35, of Pembroke Pines, Florida; ICSD call center manager Jessica Bacallo, 23, of Miami; and ICSD marketing manager Kathleen Valle, 23, of Miami; have been charged in a six-count indictment with conspiracy to defraud the U.S. government and to submit false claims; submitting false claims; conspiracy to commit mail fraud; and mail fraud.

In the fifth indictment, defendants Benjamin Pena, Robert Z. Rubeck and Tamara Frankel have been charged with generating fraudulent VRS calls. According to that indictment, Pena was allegedly paid by Viable owner and CEO John Yeh to generate fraudulent VRS minutes. Also according to the indictment, Pena allegedly paid Rubeck and Frankel to make VRS calls for the purpose of generating those fraudulent minutes. Pena, 34, of Scottsdale, Arizona; Rubeck, 34, of Surprise, Arizona; and Frankel, 28, also of Surprise; have been charged in the six-count indictment with conspiracy to defraud the U.S. government and to submit false claims; submitting false claims; conspiracy to commit mail fraud; and mail fraud.

Deaf Studio 29 owners and employees have been charged in a sixth indictment with generating fraudulent VRS calls. According to the indictment, Marc Velasquez Verson, Ellen Thompson, and Doris Martinez allegedly organized and paid employees to use a particular VRS provider to make run calls. That provider would pay the defendants approximately 20 to 25 percent of the money the provider received from the FCC for the calls generated by the defendants. Velasquez, 56, of Oswego, Oregon; Ellen Thompson, 43, of Lake Oswego, Oregon; and Doris Martinez, 51, also of Oswego; were charged in the six-count indictment with conspiracy to defraud the U.S. government and to submit false claims; submitting false claims; conspiracy to commit wire fraud; and wire fraud.

All of the indictments seek criminal forfeiture from each of the charged defendants.

An indictment is merely an accusation, and defendants are presumed innocent unless proven guilty.

These cases are being prosecuted by Assistant Chief Hank Bond Walther and Trial Attorney Brigham Cannon of the Criminal Division’s Fraud Section, with the investigative assistance of the FBI’s Washington Field Office, USPIS, and FCC-OIG.

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Jennie Bourgeois» Jennie Bourgeois

Online Informational Videos About Hearing Loss

Sign Language in Space — from NASA

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Deaf Culture Question of the Week

IRS Videos in ASL Available on YouTube

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Captioning on Hulu

Emergency Preparedness Information in ASL, Braille and Large Print

YouTube Adds Machine Generated Automatic Captions

Automatic Captions in YouTube

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26 Charged in Nationwide Scheme to Defraud the FCC’s Video Relay Service Program