Amid all the Americans with Disabilities Act anniversary celebrations last week, it’s worth noting that the U.S. House passed a bill that’s crucial to the deaf and hard of hearing population. H.R. 3101 would extend protections from the Telecommunications Act of 1996 — the law that made closed captioning on T.V. mandatory — to the [...]
[By Michael Janger] Last month, I wrote here on abledbody.com about a new captioning application for the iPhone that lets deaf and hard-of-hearing moviegoers follow the dialogue of almost any movie in any movie theater in the nation. Subtitles, as this app is called, was developed by Dan Walker, who did not realize that [...]
Amtrak’s website was down, and I needed to book my ticket from Stamford to Boston for the sixth annual Games for Health conference. G4H focuses on many uses for videogames and videogame technologies in health and healthcare. I’m speaking at Game Accessibility day on May 25 about games for people with physical and mental disabilities. [...]
Hilari Scarl’s See What I’m Saying is an exciting, funny, emotional and ultimately worthy addition to the rich compendium of films chronicling the deaf experience. Providing its own unique spin on the deaf film genre, the documentary explores the desire to strike it big on the stage from the perspective of a drummer, actor, comic [...]
For four years, I have lived within three blocks of two major movie theaters on the Upper East Side in Manhattan, yet, as a deaf person, I have never gone to a movie in these theaters because they do not use captioning systems. Consequently, my wife and I are forced to go across town to [...]
By Suzanne Robitaille Ah, video and search. Frank Sinatra said it best: Try, try, try to separate them – it’s an illusion. Here’s proof of that: Speech Technology. This week, Google sealed the deal on video search capabilities for its YouTube portal, saying it would provide auto-captions for all of its uploaded videos using proprietary Google’s [...]
Picture this: You fly off to Rome, head to the Coliseum and, using your iPhone, play a video that guides you around the ancient arena where gladiators and lions once roamed. Later, walk across Piazza del Colosseo to the Roman Forum and view a video tour of the sprawling Forum ruins, taking in what [...]
Keen Guides founder Catharine McNally says mobile video is the future of guided excursions, and will benefit the deaf and hard of hearing, too.
I didn’t get to too many workshops at the Assistive Technology Industry Association conference this year, because I only attended for one full day. I did stop into a presentation on speech-recognition for the deaf, led by Ed Rosenthal, CEO of Next Generation Technologies, a consulting firm. Rosenthal is a certified partner, and been working for [...]
Now that the thrust of the holiday movie season is upon us, let’s talk about something not so cheerful: Going to a film and not being able to hear it. Thousands of people who are deaf or hard-of-hearing miss out because they can’t follow dialogue on the big screen. Big chains like AMC Entertainment and [...]
