What matters deafness of the ears, when the mind hears?

Thoughts and comments welcome! Me, I am happy!!!

Finally, I can watch the news for more than just the moving pictures and puzzling over their meaning. I thought this day would never come.

Am awaiting the official press release and media coverage.

Below is the one sent to SADeaf, I believe.

MEDIACORP IS PLEASED TO ANNOUNCE THAT FROM 25 SEPTEMBER 2006, TV VIEWERS WILL BE ABLE TO READ WHAT THE NEWS PRESENTER IS SAYING.

The captions which are the scripts for prepared news stories, will appear at the same time as the presenter reads the news. We have introduced the captioning service, provided with the support of the Media Development Authority (MDA), in response to requests from the general public and the deaf community. English news will kick off the captioning service on 25 September with the 9:30pm news bulletin on Channel 5. Chinese news at 10pm on Channel 8 and Malay news at 8pm on Suria will introduce captions later in December 2006. We are still exploring options for captions on Tamil news.

I am one of the organisers of Deafinitely Boleh! - a 2-day deaf awareness festival to be held in December this year.

For this event, we’ve set up a website to generate publicity and provide useful and practical information for all Deaf/deaf/HI/HOH folks in coping with their disability/deafness/communication woes.

Do check it out!

P/S: "Deafinitely" is, of course, a pun on those two words. (Don’t groan!) "Boleh" is Malay for "can". Yes, the deaf boleh!

Hilarious statement below, and I luv, luv, luv the video! Jon is so clear and explains so well what RSS is.

I think anyone who knows local sign language (SEE, PSE or NSL) will be able to understand the ASL used in the video. (It helps too, that I already know what RSS is. In fact, I use it!)

So, for some fun, knowledge and entertainment, and if you know sign, click on the link!

Now isn’t this ironic: usually we’re being told to make an effort so that deaf people are not excluded from conversations between hearing people, but with Jon’s ASL video about RSS it’s the other way around: it’s clear Jon is extremely proficient in ASL and I personally would so much like to know how he explains RSS to deaf people.

Read on…