Fintan Ramblings

I came across this site woman’s hour about Improving the Teaching of Deaf Children

One in 1000 babies are born profoundly deaf every year and only 2% of these children leave school with a reading level appropriate to their age.
After a long career in the education of deaf children, Dr Diana Burman has undertaken pioneering research into the best ways of teaching such pupils how to read.
She’s developed a highly successful method for improving deaf children’s literacy and has now been rewarded for her work by being named the first ever winner of the Michael Young Prize. This award aims to celebrate research that could have a significant impact beyond academia.

I think many of us knew that from the start. We need more Deaf teachers as they can be role models and their English will improve!

I am not able to comment on this as I have emailed the BBC for a transcript and if they are going to talk about Deaf people its only fair that they should provide transcript.

Deaf Awareness Week in South Africa September 5th

I quite like this poster, and also wouldn’t you feel so good after you have learnt sign language?

I found out from someone who is a member of DUK (Deaf-UK a yahoo maling list forum) that someone who did a corpus based study called The influence of British Sign Language on Deaf English.

Many deaf people are quite sensitive about someone analysing their English and would not want someone to make a research out of their own writings without permission.
In the past we were made to feel that our ‘grammar and verb mixed up’ state meant that we were mentally impaired.
The academics wade in “hi I am doing a research etc” and just do this to further their career on the back of our disability.

You can download this research, as it’s made available on DUK

Study PDF File click here

However as you read it she is not criticising nor does she think deaf people are stupid but what worries me that these people carry out research improperly.

Her research about how BSL influenced Deaf English.
In some cases yes, but if she had done her research properly by contacting me, she would have found out that I am NOT an “identified BSL user”.

All the examples she cited are also common with oral deaf people and the fact she used me to prove her “BSL” point makes her arguments redundant.

Most BSL users have some encounters with spoken English and it is from there that these “mistakes” arise. To me, have/has/had sound the same, so I repeat those mistakes, and the/to/of/for etc is missing to my ears in spoken conversations.

I could go on….

What’s galling is that in a forum that I once participated in, a moderator had given her permission to download all the post for her analytics.
The DUK forum has its own policy, see below:

To quote from its policy
Whilst Deaf UK is a public forum, please respect Deaf people’s need for
space and not to be guinea pigs for research. It is not acceptable to just
join Deaf UK, and then post an e mail asking for information for research.
This makes Deaf people feel used and as if they are in a zoo.
If you wish to ask members of Deaf UK to contribute to a piece of research,
then you must clearly state: what the research is for, who you are, as well
as the usual questions relating to the subject of the research itself. If
subscribers of this group agree to your request, then cooperation and
information, is conditional to fulfilling an undertaking to publish the
research findings via Deaf UK

He often quotes this policy and yet never follows it himself.
However I don’t know if the researcher has contacted members not just the moderator.

I certainly wasn’t contacted nor did I wish to take part.
He has given her consent to do this so my emails along with others were analysed.

I do know that you have to join to be a member and read the archives and people are welcome to do so but to quote from http://www.cla.co.uk/

Copyright law stops other people from using and abusing your original work, this includes email messages
All your email messages are copyrighted to you (or your employer) automatically, you do not have to register this copyright
DUK does not own the copyright of messages sent to its lists, and neither does the list administrator
Messages sent to a list should not be, quoted out of context, changed in any way, reworded or mis-attributed
When you post to a public list you do not lose copyright, but your message may be, archived, forwarded to other lists and quoted by others

I am happy with this copyright law, but the moderator does not own the contents of the email. I own the contents of my own email.

Why was this study needed?
What does it benefit us?
She did her analytics on 2 blogs why is this, I suspect that the members were not forth coming.
Also its very misleading that DUK has over 2500 members, people change email address or close accounts and not bother to change it at the forum.

I’m sure such study is needed, but its common courtesy to ask if I wanted to take part.

In light of this I have now put up creative comments licence.

Another memeber of DUK have blogged about this see here.

Failure in research ethics…

Front page news on the Fiji Times

www.fijitimes.com

A DEAF and mute 30-year-old man has become the first in the Northern Division to obtain a driving licence after successfully passing his driving test, using sign language.

The achievement by Shiu Karan has baffled Land Transport Authority examiners in the northern town of Labasa who are still trying to understand how a deaf man manages to change gear on time.

An overjoyed Mr Karan only nodded his head when asked through sign language whether he was happy about his achievement.

LTA examiner Rakesh Jattan said while testing his driving skills during his driving test, he was amazed to see how Mr Karan perfectly timed changing the gears.

“Drivers usually change gears by hearing the sound of the engine, when it tires out but for this case, I am still trying to understand how he does it when he is deaf,” Mr Jattan said.

“We only communicated through sign language and he just caught on very well which was also seen during his driving test,” Mr Jattan said.

“He knew all the road signs and read all the road maps like junctions, bends and road humps very well by answering questions put to him using sign language,” he said.

The sign language was done with the assistance of the driving instructor, Shakuntla Singh who is also a teacher at the Labasa Handicapped School.

Mrs Singh said it was not difficult teaching Mr Karan how to drive.

“I believe it was not difficult for me because he had the interest to learn and so he caught on very well without going over the lessons again,” Mrs Singh said.

“It took us three weeks to complete the driving lessons and now he has a licence and we are just so proud of him,” Mr Singh said.

How stupid is this artical, they seem to be amazed that a Deaf man can learn to drive, also the driving instructor not thought to ask how he managed to change gears!

He knew how to read road maps.. for fuck sake he is not blind!!!

An article in The Register today explains that Vodafone is now buying secondhand Nokia 9210’s on eBay to sell to D/deaf customers using the service provided in association with the RNID.

Below taken from Register
Vodafone UK is hunting eBay for obsolete handsets that support its Textphone service for the deaf.
British telephone companies are required to provide services for deaf customers, who generally use a keyboard to type text messages. Text- and instant messaging have mitigated the need to an extent, but seeing every key typed is a better communication experience, according to the RNID (Royal National Institute for Deaf people).
Vodafone’s service uses software provided by the RNID running on Nokia’s Communicator 9210. The problem is that Nokia doesn’t make the 9210 any more. And while rival networks use two-device solutions, Vodafone is forced to source Communicators from anywhere they can, including eBay, until it comes up with something better.
A Vodafone spokeswoman told us: “We buy Communicators secondhand from a variety of sources, including eBay, and clean them up for our customers.”

Why is a mobile phone operator forced to scrounge second hand phones to support a service that was once a flagship.
Why do us deaf people have to use second hand goods?
Why couldn’t global operator with over 200 million customers to ask a manufacturer to design a handset fit for 2007 specifically for the Typetalk service.
The Nokia 9210 would have remained in production had Vodafone offered the service to the deaf community around the world and ordered a sufficient number of handsets to make this viable or cheaper …

Been trying out BBC Iplayer last few days .
I can understand why people cant see the point of it when most programmes are repeated.
But I like the idea that you can watch programmes at a time that’s convenient for me so I thought I try it out.

I am not going to detail here how its a bit of a palaver to get it going (search on Google and you will see) but in all it took 15min to set up.
Found a good set up guide here
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayerbeta/install_part_1.shtml (us Linux users cant understand why almost 10 step install the damn thing)

For some reason the video doesn’t show up, if I took a screen shot but here is one that I found showing programme (with subtitles) called Two pints of lager and a packet of crisp to give an example of what it would look like

In order to watch programmes with subtitles that’s the size you get in the screenshot

I understand that resolution is lower, so full-screen viewing is less than satisfactory, also in full screen mode it does not show subtitles so how very frustrating is this in order to watch this I have to sit close to my monitor.

(Click on thumbnails to enlarge)

At a glance its does not show which programmes carry subtitles

When selecting briefings it does not contain subtitles (no surprise there)

No option to show just subtitles listings and the only way to find out is by selecting each programme to find out if it contains subtitles

Interestingly if you see picture below

There is a drop down section to which gives you an option to watch it with subtitles and BSL (British sign language)
It’s a pity that How to be the perfect housewife contain BSL (who watches that shit?)

While watching it I though the interpreter is small but selecting full screen is better, how ever quality is not that good.

I understand it’s at beta stage so I am watching how it develops with interest and I think that the subtitles should be bigger and any programmes that contain BSL should be a higher resolution so watch out if you don’t have unlimited download package from your ISP other wise you will fall foul of broadband fair Use Policy
It’s a bit of a shame that it is built on Internet Explorer and Windows Media Player – especially as it comes complete with all the security errors, warning messages that seem to plague Microsoft programs

I think I will only use BBC iplayer to watch one programme called See Hear as from October because it’s being moved from Saturday 12pm slot to weekdays!
They say to increases viewing figures but they are competing with loose women on ITV.
Bad enough showing it on Saturday but even worst mid week when I am at work also getting it cut from 45 min to 30 min and yes you get repeats only one repeat at 2 am in the morning compared to programmes like Eastenders showing at 8pm repeated at 10 pm plus you get another chance to watch it on Sunday afternoon

Only half hour Deaf program per week shown at 2 ridiculous times and that’s what the only reason I will be using the iplayer for.