Is It Better To Call Someone "Stupid"?

One night, as a young kid learning about the deafness I was born with, I asked my mother how I became deaf. She explained that she got German measles when she was pregnant with me. Confused, I went to the World Book Encyclopedia in the family’s living room to look up the term “German measles.” In a pregnant mother, the encyclopedia said, it can cause “deafness, blindness, or mental retardation” in the unborn baby.So I had the answer to the cause of my deafness. But, still curious, I asked my mother what “mental retardation” meant. In the simplest terms she could explain to a 6-year-old boy, she said it meant people who had a hard time thinking.Over the years, in my uninitiated view of the disability world, I always viewed “mental retardation” as a clinical term that described a variety of conditions, including Down syndrome, Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI), even autism. Now as an adult, I know this term is very muddily defined. For example, autism is not always indicative of mental retardation, as there are autistic individuals who demonstrate extremely high intellectual functioning.  But how is "mental retardation" clearly defined, per se?I noticed, over the past 10 to 15 years, an increased use of the word “retarded” as a way to insult someone, typically one who made a stupid comment or a not well-thought-out decision. Knowing what it felt like to be insulted as a deaf child, the indiscriminate use of the word “retarded” to describe stupidity did not sit well with me. On the other hand, as far as I could tell over the years, there was little noticeable effort to publicize the inappropriate use of the word “retarded” until recently.Now, prompted in part by Rahm Emanuel’s unfortunate use of this term to refer to some activist members of his own political party, and the publicity surrounding Sarah Palin’s son Trig, who has Down syndrome, a bill has been introduced in the U.S. Senate to remove the term “mental retardation” from all references in federal law and replace it with “intellectual disability." Unofficially named Rosa’s Law in recognition of a Maryland girl with an intellectual disability, it will be marked up to a Senate committee on Wednesday and is expected to pass the full Senate.Making a determination as to what words are both socially acceptable and respectful of a certain group is always a messy affair which takes time to sort out.  However, as long as efforts are continually made to describe certain people with disabilities (PwDs) in more progressive and socially acceptable terms, they always redound toward building mutual respect and trust between PwDs and the community at large. This is a much better option than maintaining the status quo where unthinking people bandy around words describing certain groups of people, as a way to insult others.If, in a fit of anger, you have to, have to, HAVE TO insult someone, it is far more appropriate to call that person "stupid," not "retarded."  At least in Rahm Emanuel's case, calling some liberal activists "stupid" would have kept the debate squarely on President Obama's health care bill, which was what the fight was originally all about.But, ideally, no insults would be even better.Disclosure:  I am not affiliated in any way with the "End the Word" campaign at www.r-word.org.

Abledbody.com: SUNY-Orange's Assistive Technology Expo

On Saturday, May 15, the State University of New York in Orange County (SUNY Orange) hosted its first annual Hudson Valley Assistive Technology Expo. Over 60 exhibits and vendors advertised their services and products. Headlining the expo was a keynote speech by Dr. Nancy Sulla of IDECORP (an expert on Universal Design for Learning), special screenings of the movie “Shooting Beauty," and our very own Suzanne Robitaille, who signed copies of her book, “The Illustrated Guide to Assistive Technology.”To read my full article on Abledbody.com about the SUNY Orange Assistive Technology Expo, click here.

Abledbody.com: iPhone Movie Captioning App To Be Shelved?

Last month, I wrote here on abledbody.com about a new captioning application for the iPhone, called Subtitles, that lets deaf and hard-of-hearing moviegoers follow the dialogue of almost any movie in any movie theater in the nation.  Earlier this week, Dan Walker was notified by Apple that his app violated movie studio copyrights relating to transcripts, and rejected his latest update.  While an earlier update is working, there is a possibility his app may be rejected outright.To read my article on the Subtitles for iPhone app, click here.

Let Your Fingers Do The Hiring: Part 2

Following up on everyone’s feedback and my response, I would like to add further clarity and color to my original article on Braille and employment.Born profoundly deaf, I often swam against the tide of popular opinion about deaf and hard-of-hearing people, just as successful non-Braille users did in swimming against the tide of popular opinion about blind and visually-impaired people which assumes that all blind people use Braille. While myriad educational choices were, and are, always available to deaf children – whether to teach speaking and listening, whether to teach sign language, or teach both, or follow other educational methods – conventional wisdom among uninformed (and I emphasize uninformed) hearing people was that pretty much all deaf people signed. This impression has made its way into popular media and informs general cultural discussions with regard to the deaf community. For that reason, many hearing people who approach me assume that I grew up relying on sign language to succeed, when that was never the case. I grew up learning to speak and listen, and did not learn sign language until I was 21 years old. Even then, sign language is not my primary mode of communication. I am most comfortable conversing in spoken English.This does not mean that I am against sign language. I am happily fluent in it, and have many deaf friends who I communicate with in sign language. I know many deaf people who have grown up being taught sign language, and have become successful and happy in their lives. Although sign language is the best known, and very popular, mode of communication in the deaf community, it is one of many different and equally valid educational flavors, each with its own strengths and shortcomings.For several decades until the end of the 1970’s, oral education for the deaf was implemented for as many deaf children as possible with little consideration for individual differences. While I have greatly benefited from oral education and count many other deaf friends who benefited as well, I cannot say that this approach was as beneficial for all deaf children. It was an “unmitigated disaster” for the deaf community in that many deaf children who otherwise needed sign language were denied it, sometimes by force. That is why in the 1980’s and particularly 1988 with the Deaf Power Now movement at Gallaudet, there was a backlash against oral education and increased interest in education through sign language, or bilingual education using sign language and English. This trend, however, was not helpful for some deaf children for which the oral or auditory-verbal option could have been more appropriate.By a similar token, uninformed sighted people think every blind person uses or should use Braille, when that has never been, and should never be, the case. Braille is not always appropriate for everyone in the blind community. That 90% of employed people know Braille means that the other 10% who are employed do not use Braille and still were employed.The point of my article is that Braille has become less accessible to blind people who have a need for it. It does not overtly say that Braille should be the be-all and end-all for every blind person, only that it is an essential tool to enable blind people to more effectively use the written word. My article is critical of the school administrators who made assumptions that non-Braille technologies are good enough for blind children, without examining carefully the skills and abilities of each child and whether that child has a need for Braille support. A school administrator who is extremely knowledgeable about the value of the Braille system, and extremely knowledgeable about the value of other assistive technologies for the blind, is in a much better position to evaluate the educational needs of a blind child than one who is not as knowledgeable. If that administrator says that this child does not need Braille to have a good education, then that administrator’s word carries far more credibility than the word of another administrator who cannot claim to have that level of knowledge. I take to task the educators who are not as informed or ignorant of the subtle and not-so-subtle issues in the blind community, and yet make decisions that impact the lives of blind children. This has unfortunately been a problem in the past couple of decades as the number of blind people using Braille declined.Technology is an empowering tool for people with disabilities, and also a tool that should be used carefully and appropriately – especially in cases where non-technological approaches can be just as beneficial, if not more so, to a person with a disability. I have had a cochlear implant (CI) for five years and I love it. Children as young as 8 months have undergone surgery for CI’s. The popular media has called the CI a device that “cures” their deafness and helps them to “hear again” (as if babies born deaf had ever heard sound in the first place!). This has given some parents the mistaken assumption that the CI will fix everything that is wrong with the baby’s hearing – when that is never the case. Consistent therapy, lots of elbow grease, and active parental involvement are essential to the educational success of a child implanted with a CI.This is the important rule that should be observed no matter what type of disability: evaluate each person on an individual basis, and evaluate that person well in the context of known tools, devices, and methods that have been verified to succeed for other persons with the same disability. It’s the approach I have tried to take in my writings and commentaries about issues relevant to people with disabilities, especially in the business world.

Let Your Fingers Do The Hiring: Responding to Your Comments

Last week, I wrote an article about Braille, the blind, and unemployment, titled, “Let Your Fingers Do the Hiring: Blind People and Employment.” With one exception to date, blind people I reached out to, or who posted comments on my blog, were positive in their praise of my article. My followup post is in response to a successful blind professional who wrote a point-by-point response that challenges the points I presented in my article.  Given the points he made, his response is best addressed here in a full post instead of in the Comments section.Michael Squillace, a software engineer who is blind and does not use Braille, has posted his comments here in full.  Below are my responses, with Squillace's comments in italics:

Since you have seemed to come up empty-handed in terms of finding information regarding, "..blind people who were able to lead quality lives without the use of Braille," let me assure you that there are plenty of us.

I stand by my article 100%.  Perhaps some sentences could have been phrased better, but my basic argument remains unchanged.People who succeeded in their lives and careers without relying on Braille should definitely be recognized. When I searched on the web for, and inquired around about, blind people who grew up and how they were educated, I was very skeptical of the lack of information on blind people who were successful without Braille. I knew they were out there -- those 10% of employed and legally blind people who do not use Braille -- and  I wanted to give them their due in my article, but I just had no empirical information available, and thus no stories to tell.  After I posted this article, I emailed some blind people and advocates for the blind, and asked for their feedback. The comments of those who responded were uniformly positive, which surprised me given the fact that I could not find successful blind or visually-impaired people who do not use Braille.I would appreciate information on any blind people who do not rely on Braille and have become successful in their lives or careers.  The more diversity, the better.Yet this is not the point of my article, which is about the decline of Braille as a result of decisions made by schools that were not well-informed and did not consider the whole spectrum of educational options available to blind and visually-impaired children. It is unfortunately an ongoing problem in other disability groups.

I resent the comment that our lives as blind persons have been an "unmitigated disaster" simply due to our not using braille, many of us by our own choice. You might just as well claim that blind people live intolerably horrible lives and have made little progress in the years since the Federal Rehabilitations Act because they did not receive, say, adequate orientation and mobility training, which many of us have not.

Yes, “unmitigated disaster” were strong words to use. There is no denying that 50% of blind people used Braille in the 1960’s and just 10% use Braille today, and that the statistics I show indicate the educational level among blind people have declined during that time. It is a disaster nonetheless, whether it was caused by declining use of Braille or other factors, and I was perhaps dramatic with the use of “unmitigated.” This does not mean that there are no blind people who have succeeded in their lives and careers without the use of Braille.This article in last December's New York Times was one of the guiding posts for my article. It examines both sides of the braille debate -- those who prefer to read print, and those who prefer to read Braille.Michael, you clearly have done well without relying on Braille, and I am not surprised there are others like you.  Born profoundly deaf, I do speak and listen well, and did not learn sign language until I was 21.  I worked extremely hard to be where I am in terms of spoken communication.  Just as I worked very hard to learn to speak, I am sure that some blind people have to work just as hard as I did to be able to spell and write well, and it is easier for some to do so by learning Braille.  This is not to say that every blind person has to learn Braille.  I certainly did not need sign language in order to speak and listen well, but other deaf people I know do want sign language to aid in their educational development, and they have become successful in their lives as a result.You mentioned “many of us by our own choice.” I have no statistics or hard data, but it would be safe to assume that blind and visually-impaired people who are not successful in their careers, and do not use Braille, came into this situation through decisions made for them during their childhoods that may have something to do with not using Braille.  Among the deaf and hard-of-hearing, and in other disability groups, some people have had choices made for them that in retrospect were ill-advised.  For blind people who became successful, whether they rely on Braille or not, the choices they made have little to do with the points I make in my article.The other person who made a comment to my article says, and it bears repeating here:  "I think the argument is that blind children need to be taught braille or they will have a strong potential to not be able to communicate in a written form effectively. Being able to write and spell is critical to getting a good job."

It is true that braille literacy has significantly decreased but that should not be equated with or somehow naturally imply that literacy or communicative skills of blind persons have diminished.

Nowhere in my article do I say that literacy has diminished, or that communicative skills have diminished. All I have written about is the ability of blind individuals to express themselves in the written word, either through Braille or without.

the fact that 90% of persons who use braille are employed should not be surprising. Since, given your own statistics, most of these adults have been of workforce age longer than those who do not learn braille, naturally they have had more of an opportunity to find stable, long-term, gainful employment. More generally, however, the fact that there is such a high unemployment rate among blind adults is, I believe, not attributable to their lack of braille usage. Rather, I believe that access to assistive technologies like screen readers and screen magnifiers in this information age significantly hinders opportunities in education, employment, and entertainment.

I cite these statistics in my article without further interpretation of the numbers. I lay out the numbers for people to digest, and have not offered further discussion on them other than to paint a fuller picture of the blind community. However, one sentence I wrote, “Employment statistics paint an even more powerful picture of how blind people live out their lives,” could have been more diplomatically worded.Can you elaborate further on what you mean about assistive technologies like screen readers and screen magnifiers, which “hinder opportunities?” How does this square with your achievements in utilizing those assistive technologies?

Also, since you are so interested in the differences among different groups of PWDS, consider that blind people still face a great deal of fear and ignorance in all walks of life. People still talk about me in the third person to my wife, still cower at my approach, and still speak to me as if I am deaf rather than blind. I do not believe that any other disability group faces more fear or ignorance on a regular basis and many (like your own) face much less. Finally, I find it a little odd that you, as a deaf person, would have so much to say about blindness and how best to cope with it. I would not think of making claims about the benefits of sign language for your community because I know so little about it and because signing is so foreign to me as a blind person. Regardless of the statistics you find so intriguing, perhaps you ought best to refrain from judging the quality of life of a group of persons so entirely different in their lifestyle and their everyday activities from your own.

It is presumptuous to say that the blind community “faces more fear or ignorance on a regular basis” than other disability groups, mine included. Each disability group has its own challenges in how it is perceived and labeled by the non-disabled population. There should not be, and never should be, any moral hierarchy among disability groups in terms of how they are negatively perceived by non-disabled people. It is enough to say that there should never be one single case of negative labeling or perception of any individual with a disability, ever.As you find it odd that I, “as a deaf person, would have so much to say about blindness and how best to cope with it,” I also find it odd that you take the moral road and say that blind people like you face more fear or ignorance than other disability groups, without knowing much about what other disability groups, including mine, face in their own worlds. Like Ana Rodarte, a woman featured on Oprah who has severe neurofibromatosis, a condition in which her face is so extremely disfigured that people scream and run away wherever she goes. Or a intelligent person in a wheelchair I met who has little control over the motor functions of his face and, as a result, drools into a cup – I have seen, to paraphrase your own words, “people talk in the third person about him, still cower at his approach, and speak of him as if he is deaf rather than mobility-impaired.” Or a child with dyslexia – people may think she is not intelligent and lacks attention, a perception that could do as much psychological damage to her self-esteem as someone who talks about a blind child in the third person and ignores him.No one should make a subjective moral determination that a group with a particular disability faces more fear or ignorance on a regular basis than another group with a different disability. We can make definitive moral determinations about individuals with disabilities based on their particular situation (i.e. a blind child in New Jersey was teased and made fun of by a group of boys, and then dragged and beaten up on the street, versus a child on a wheelchair in Texas who is just teased in the school halls but do not suffer physical abuse). But we should not make the same moral determinations about disability groups as a whole. Otherwise this invites labeling and stereotyping.Finally, in response to the comment that I “as a deaf person, would have so much to say about blindness and how best to cope with it,” where do I say in my article how blind people should cope with their own disability? I do not step on a soapbox and claim to be an expert on blindness, but instead try to draw on primary and secondary sources and comment as best I can on a disability I have no personal familiarity with. All the commentary in my article is based on information from different perspectives that are available on the web, including scientific articles, newspaper clippings, and the websites of the National Federation of the Blind (which according to the New York Times "frowns upon" reading print) and American Foundation for the Blind.Some blind and visually-impaired people, and their advocates, have written me to say it was a well-done article.  Yet I do not seek perfection -- I always seek out opposing viewpoints in an effort to promote diversity, original thinking and honest critique.  Thanks, Michael, for your insights and please feel free to comment anytime.

April Unemployment Rate for People with Disabilities: 15.2%

Earlier this week, I wrote here about the high U.S. unemployment rate among people with disabilities (PwDs) and spelled out some reasons -- obvious and not so obvious -- for the gap between this rate and the general U.S. unemployment rate.Today, the U.S. Department of Labor announced the unemployment rate for PwDs in April. The rate: 15.2%, a dramatic increase of 9% from the March rate of 13.9%. During the same period, the general U.S. unemployment rate rose from 9.7% to 9.9% -- a much slower rate of increase of 2%.Without access to specific data explaining the steep increase in the PwD unemployment rate versus the general population, I am refraining from making any conclusions on the disparity in the rate increases.  However, it is safe to assume that the underlying basic causes behind higher unemployment among PwDs, which I wrote about in my original post, can play a major role in accelerating the rate of increase in the PwD unemployment rate.I am interested in hearing your thoughts on this.

Let Your Fingers Do the Hiring: Blind People and Employment

In the disability world, there is often a difference of opinion on whether it is more appropriate to enroll a disabled child in a school specifically geared toward him or her, or to mainstream the child with non-disabled children in the general educational system. The decision on how to enroll a disabled child has major implications on the way the child spends his or her life as an adult, and importantly, the type of career the adult pursues.The degree of difference in educational approaches varies by disability -- those with serious developmental disabilities are usually placed in disability-specific schools, while paraplegics and quadriplegics are generally mainstreamed. Some types of disability, especially deafness, lend themselves to more complex debates on educational approaches. Generally, if a disabled child is put in a school that specifically educates children with the same type of disability, he/she would get an education geared toward accommodating the disability, but at the expense of forgoing educational opportunities otherwise available to mainstreamed children. On the other hand, while the disabled child who is mainstreamed may develop a strong education and interact on a regular basis with non-disabled children, this would be at the expense of social development, especially where the non-disabled peers are not appreciative and accommodating of the child's disability (up to the point of bullying, deliberate ignorance, or just an innocuous lack of awareness of the disabled condition). Technology has, particularly in the last decade, become a very strong influence in the decisions parents and professionals make in the education of disabled children.This debate has been surprisingly consistent across all types of disabilities, including the deaf, the blind, the mentally challenged, etc. What is very interesting about this debate is that, depending on the disability, the benefits of one educational approach is more obvious, while with other disabilities, the benefits of either educational approach (mainstreamed and non-mainstreamed) are not as clear-cut and often result in very spirited and emotional discussions on the fate of the child. As a deaf person, I have often experienced a high level of tension in the dialogue between those who champion sign language as a primary mode of communication in education (usually requiring schools well-trained in sign language, or sign language programs within mainstreamed schools), while others emphasize the auditory-verbal method (which is used to a great extent in mainstreamed education and at oral schools for the deaf).In the blind and visually-impaired community, however, there is stronger and stronger evidence indicating that as more blind children are mainstreamed, they are increasingly becoming divorced from Braille, a mode of communication that is essential to their ability to understand and interpret the written word. As a person who values the appropriateness of different modes of education for different people with the same disability, I tried over the years to find information on blind people who were able to lead quality lives without the use of Braille, and have come up almost empty in my research. Looking at the available statistics on employment and education for the blind, it is patently evident that the blind community has been very ill-served by the lack of use of Braille in education in the last three decades.In 1973, Congress passed the Rehabilitation Act, prohibiting discrimination on the basis of disability in Federal programs, and in programs that receive assistance from the U.S. Government. Among the more well known sections of this act are Sections 504 and 508, which requires these programs to provide reasonable accommodations to children and adults with disabilities, using technologies that enable these people to have functional equivalence to those in the non-disabled population.The passage of this act had a major impact on the education of people with disabilities, as it made it possible for PwD's to receive an education in mainstreamed settings, increasing access to educational, professional and social options. Over the next few decades, however, the application of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 has been uneven, as many PwD's saw their quality of life increase, while other PwD's suffered. For the blind community, the 1973 Act has been an unmitigated disaster, with across-the-board declines in blind people's quality of life. For many decades before the 1960's, the blind and visually-impaired relied on the Braille system to help them read, and express themselves through writing. In an age where the written word, aided by the Industrial Revolution and its impact on book publishing and world literacy, became a crucial part of a person's life, Braille enabled the blind to better understand and express the written word and keep themselves on a par with the seeing world. In schools for the blind, teachers used the Braille system to help blind children learn English.Starting in the early 1960's, and accelerating after the 1973 passage of the Rehabilitation Act, the decisions to educate blind children increasingly resided with administrators in thousands of school districts, and less on schools for the blind. With the advent of new technologies that enabled blind people to utilize more diverse tools to understand the written word, school districts increasingly determined that if blind students could rely on these new -- and cheaper -- technologies, it did not make sense for the schools to pay for the more expensive outlay of braille devices. So, a whole generation of blind children grew up with little access to Braille.According to a study by the National Federation of the Blind, less than 10 percent of the 1.3 million legally blind people in the U.S. use Braille, compared to 50 percent a generation ago.  Other statistics show that among legally blind children, just 12 percent read in Braille, and Braille literacy rates are declining around the world.More interestingly, over 70 percent of blind adults are unemployed, and 50 percent of blind high school students drop out.Employment statistics paint an even more powerful picture of how blind people live out their lives:  90 percent of blind adults who are Braille-literate are employed, while just 33 percent of blind adults who do not use Braille are employed.Why the shift away from Braille? Budgetary reasons were the major driving force behind the school districts' decisions, fueled by the districts' perception that blind people would benefit from the new technologies that did not utilize Braille and render the raised-dot mode of reading unnecessary. Screen readers, raised print, and text-to-speech devices, especially in computers and the Internet, have widened the spectrum of selections available to blind people and given them powerful tools to read and interpret the written word. Unfortunately, all of these new technologies lack one essential ingredient that is very important to blind people: their ability to express themselves through the written word. Short of typing on the computer -- which makes it more time-consuming to correct their own typing mistakes -- there is no other technology short of Braille that enables blind people to accurately, expressively, and efficiently communicate in their writing style. While the average seeing person takes for granted the ease of picking up a pen and writing his or her words on paper, or pulling up a keyboard and typing away, this mundane but essential act of writing is not easily available to the blind person.Proponents of alternate forms of technology point to the fact that non-blind people cannot understand Braille and thus would have a hard time communicating with them on legal documents, literature, newspapers, and other expressions of the written word. By enabling blind people to communicate on a platform that is easily understandable by non-blind people, they can better interact in the world at large. That may be true, but it fails to consider blind people's ability to express themselves through the written word. The non-Braille technologies put the power of control in the hands of non-blind people. Braille gives blind people the ability to control their own flow of communication, and perform on the same functional platform as non-blind people.Fortunately there has been a strong push by advocates for the blind community to return Braille to its rightful, historic place in the annals of the blind. Braille readers that transmit text from a computer, such as a document or a website, have been developed, and blind people sometimes prefer to input their words in Braille than on standard computer keyboards which require not only the ability to type, but also a speech synthesizer and a screen reader to read back what is written.Nothing is more plain to the eye than a statistic that shows that 90% of employed blind people use Braille, while 2 out of 3 unemployed blind people do not use Braille.

Wanted: More People with Disabilities in the Workforce

Over the last three years, the Great Recession has been a major news topic in the United States, with the unemployment rate now running at nearly 10%. For people with disabilities (PwDs), unemployment has been a bigger story, with almost 14% of the PwD work force off the payrolls, according to March 2010 data compiled by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.And a double whammy: while over 70% of the U.S. population is considered part of the labor force, the same data shows just 22% of the total PwD population participates in the labor force.  With 27 million Americans classified as having a disability, this means that just over 5 million of them are employed. Ideally, even at the overall U.S. unemployment rate of 10%, 17 million PwD's, or 70% of the PwD population, should have a job. The 12 million missing PwDs, if they could actively search for, and ultimately land a job, could add 10% to the total U.S. work force -- not a small number when one is looking for potential sources of additional productivity and wealth.In reality, some of the PwDs are unable to hold a job for any reason due to their own specific disability, so the "12 million missing" figure is too optimistic. But there is no denying there are millions of PwDs relying on government subsidies, family support and other resources to get by, when they have specific skills, talents and expertise to perform satisfactorily in the work force when placed in the right role. Not to mention a unique outlook shaped by their almost daily efforts to resolve challenges which arise because of their specific disabilities. That they deal with adversity every day lends them the ability to work hard and develop creative solutions, which are two qualities essential to the success of any business.It is easy to scapegoat business as the reason for the relatively low employment of PwDs, because of the prevailing attitude among some employers that PwDs do not provide as much added value to a business as someone who is not disabled. This only tells part of the story. There are two other factors that contribute to underemployment of PwDs: a hiring process that is structured in a way that does not allow PwDs an equal platform upon which to market themselves for jobs; and an educational level among PwDs that is lower than that of the general population.Make no mistake, I am a true believer in the free market. People -- disabled or not -- should succeed and sell themselves hard on their own merits without the expectation of external assistance from the government. They should put into practice the values of working hard, overcoming challenges, and developing their own skills and experience to ultimately become indispensable to any employer requiring these credentials. A favorite quotation of mine, "The world always wins," from Khaled Hosseini's Kite Runner, is not a fatalistic acceptance of your role in the whole wide world, but rather a Realpolitik appraisal of where you stand, and what you can do to make a major, but realistic, difference in your global community.This does not mean that businesses are exempt from addressing the issue of PwD underemployment. PwDs should compete on a fair, level playing field with those who are not disabled, so they can market their skills effectively and match themselves with employers who have a need for these skills. Yet, in reality, the prevailing myth that PwDs in the workforce cost too much and contribute little, a hiring process that limits access to PwD applicants, and the lack of educational opportunities for PwDs are three strikes against the ability of PwDs to be hired in the workplace, no matter how hard they work and how creative they are in getting themselves recognized.Within many business organizations, there is a reluctance to hire PwDs largely because of long-held myths that they cannot contribute as well as those without disabilities, and also because the cost of accommodating PwD's is thought to be prohibitively expensive. The current Think Beyond the Label campaign debunks these assumptions, and fortunately, more businesses and Fortune 500 companies are embracing the value of diversity in the workforce because it adds creativity, innovation and unique talent to their capabilities, providing them a critical competitive edge in a globalized world.Companies that incorporate diversity into their hiring strategies usually harbor work environments that are wonderfully diverse, very interesting to work in, and allow new ideas and solutions to incubate. This translates into greater awareness of the essential value of PwDs in the workforce, and enables companies to scour the entire labor pool for the talent and skills they need, instead of limiting themselves to the pool of people who are not disabled. When companies underutilize PwD candidates in their hiring practices, there is a tendency for these companies to be less aware of the work contribution value of PwDs, so they miss out on unique skills, talents, and traits that may be harder to find in the non-disabled talent pool.The current hiring process contributes in a way to the above problem. For most companies, PwD job applicants share with non-PwD applicants the same process for applying for jobs, interviewing, and receiving job offers. That is an issue, because the (mostly online) process assumes you can see, hear, talk, and walk. Find a job you like online? Click on the "Apply Now" button. Fill out the information: your name, your address, your phone number, your employment history. (Can you do this when you're blind?) Get a phone call from a hiring manager, asking for a phone interview. (What if you're deaf?) Visit the company for an interview. (What if you're in a wheelchair, and the building is not accessible?) The very nature of access to the online sites weeds out PwDs who otherwise have excellent skills and talents that any company would kill for.While there is no denying that PwDs are just as talented as those who are not disabled, the educational system in the U.S. has not been uniform in its ability to provide opportunities for successful careers for PwDs. Partly because some PwDs students are not valued in the educational system, but more so because of disagreements on how best to educate PwDs, some disabled students go on to incredibly successful careers, while others are held back because the educational system has not afforded them the opportunity to unlock their talents and skills. This is a complex issue that merits an entirely new article focusing on education, but it is worth noting that if PwDs are evaluated on a case-by-case basis rather than within a set of assumptions, their skills and abilities can be more easily identified. Then, based on this information, they can be more effectively placed in the appropriate educational and professional tracks.I do not knock the business world, particularly those companies I have worked with. Compared to 30 years ago, businesses today have been far more progressive in hiring, interviewing, and employing PwDs. More Fortune 500's incorporate disability hiring in their diversity practices today than ever before. Yet, there are still many companies who, at best, are unaware of the potential value of PwDs for their businesses, representing a huge opportunity cost measured in lost productivity, missing wealth and, ultimately, a greater competitive edge.Feel free to share your thoughts. If you would like to share experiences and stories that highlight the issues above, please post them here or send me an email.

Abledbody.com: Deaf Entertainers Documentary Hits All the Right Notes

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 and singer – all who happen to be deaf or hard-of-hearing.To read my full review of Hilari Scarl's documentary, click here.

Abledbody.com: iPhone App Delivers Movie Captions On The Go

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 specially scheduled open-captioned or Rear Window Captioning screenings of these movies in select theaters, or go to independent theaters that show foreign films with English subtitles. It was either this, or wait for movies with subtitles to arrive on DVD, months after their release.I have always wanted the flexibility -- like any hearing person -- to decide at a moment's notice to see a movie at my local theater. So, imagine my excitement when, earlier this week, I heard about a new, 99-cent iPhone application that lets me do just that.To read my full review of the iPhone Subtitles application, click here.

Abledbody.com: Alan Brightman's Disability Wonderland

As a voracious reader of books, I read many different genres. However, I like straightforward plotlines, chapters with a clear structure and a logical progression of an idea or story. For those reasons, it took time for me to digest, figure out and ultimately, understand, DisabilityLand, Alan Brightman’s well-written book about people with disabilities.To read my full review of Brightman's book, click here.

Video Relay Services: Removing the Profit Incentive Of Hiring a Deaf Employee - And Keeping That Employee

On February 25, 2010, in an ongoing response to the November arrests of 26 Video Relay Services (VRS) executives and employees for defrauding the United States Government, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) issued a declaratory ruling regarding its VRS program. While most of the policy declarations were non-controversial, one policy statement that prohibits VRS companies from being compensated for their deaf employees’ use of VRS almost immediately caused confusion and consternation within the VRS universe and the deaf community at large. This ruling may have the effect of forcing VRS companies to hire fewer deaf and hard-of-hearing employees – not a small issue in a community that is fiercely proud of its ability to work productively and run their own businesses in the context of their limited ability to hear. I am no lawyer, but I believe this may be allowed under the Americans with Disabilities Act, because this law has an “undue hardship” clause which protects companies in cases where reasonable accommodation costs would negatively impact their ability to effective operate their business.(As a direct result of the FCC’s ruling, and prior FCC decisions as far back as last June to withhold funds from VRS providers for certain calls, Purple Communications sent the FCC an Emergency Stay Request and an application for review of the FCC's rulings.)The three major points of the FCC’s ruling are summarized here, with the third point dominating current conversation by word-of-mouth and through the blogosphere:

1. International-to-international calls are not compensable by the TRS Interstate Fund. In other words, if I am in Paris and I want to call a restaurant on the other side of town for a reservation, I cannot use any VRS service for this as it is based in the United States. However, my wife, who grew up outside Toronto and still has family there, can still call her mother on VRS from New York. What is not clear is whether I can call my mother in Massachusetts from a chalet in the Swiss Alps.
2. Voice Carry Over (VCO) calls used by hearing people for the purposes of free long-distance calling are strictly prohibited and not compensable.
3. Calls made by deaf or hard-of-hearing VRS employees as part of work are not compensable.

Several VRS companies have hired many deaf and hard-of-hearing employees, not just for their skills, but for their insights into the deaf and hard-of-hearing market, and also because it makes good business sense, it projects an appearance of attention to the needs of the deaf market, and has a positive impact on their brand.Kelby Brick, Vice President of Regulatory and Strategy Policy at Purple Communications, slammed the FCC, saying that “[VRS] providers . . . that hire many deaf and hard-of-hearing employees, including managers and executives, will be at a competitive disadvantage because the reimbursement rate will be skewed toward those providers with less expenses as a result of not hiring deaf and hard-of-hearing employees.” This appears to be a veiled shot at Sorenson Communications, which controls between 75%-80% of the VRS market, and whose management structure does not proportionally staff as many deaf and hard-of-hearing people as does Purple and ZVRS.At first glance, a deaf VRS employee utilizing his company’s own network to make his own work-related call, and making it compensable by the TRS Fund, would be a conflict of interest. However, upon closer look, such a ruling, without appropriate adjustment to the TRS Fund rate, would either bankrupt some VRS companies or force them to hire fewer deaf and hard-of-hearing employees. If a deaf employee uses VRS for work-related calls five hours a week, over 50 weeks (assuming 2 weeks of vacation), the cost to the VRS company would be $100,000 – substantially more than the average salary of a typical VRS employee. Five hours is a conservative assumption, as many deaf VRS managers and executives use their company’s services more frequently.A VRS employee, who asked not to be named, voiced frustration with the FCC’s stance. The employee says there are many conference calls involving deaf and hearing VRS employees across different locations, and the use of VRS is necessary for the full and complete participation of the deaf employees in the company’s business decisions. The FCC told the company, according to the employee, that instant messaging or direct video streaming could be used for deaf employees who wish to participate. The employee said, “There is no functional equivalence with these alternate choices. They are time-consuming, and they put us at a competitive disadvantage to those companies who do not rely on as many deaf employees for their business decisions.”As a result of the FCC’s ruling, if the VRS companies plan to include the cost of the deaf employees’ VRS calls as business expenses in their reports to the FCC, the reimbursement rate – currently approximately $6.50 per minute – could be reset substantially higher. Whether that is palatable to the FCC, the telephone companies who contribute the money to the funds, and the U.S. Government is open to debate.In order for VRS companies to continue providing quality services to the deaf and hard-of-hearing community, it is essential that they hire deaf and hard-of-hearing people for the following reasons:

1. On merit, of course.
2. They provide an intuitive, deep understanding of the deaf community that hearing employees cannot hope to replicate. This is essential for developing VRS features that more directly address the needs of the deaf community, and for customer service that is quick, responsive, and respectful to that community.
3. Having deaf employees within the company builds up trust between deaf and hard-of-hearing customers and the company itself, which is crucial to the company’s brand equity.

If the FCC effectively bars the reimbursement to companies of minutes used by their own deaf and hard-of-hearing employees, these companies face a choice: hire fewer deaf and hard-of-hearing employees, or keep these employees and watch their competitive financial advantage erode as other companies with lower cost structures (as a result of fewer deaf employees, not because of efficient business practices) pursue a more efficient capital structure, since less of their funds would be tied up in labor and operational requirements.Over the past eight years since the reimbursement of video relay providers by the TRS Fund was approved, the TRS Fund rate was set with the intent of covering the costs of providing the VRS services, and on top of it, a margin of profit that enables these companies to reinvest the profits into improving the delivery of their VRS features. Initially set at $4.50 per minute, it went as high as $7.00 before leveling off at $6.50. These rates are set on an annual basis after substantial discussions between the VRS companies, consumer advocates, and the FCC.At the moment, it is difficult to estimate what the TRS Fund rate should be if the deaf employees’ calls are treated as business expenses instead of reimbursable minutes. However, I do not believe that increasing the TRS Fund rate to cover these costs serve any good purpose. In addition to the expected negative reaction from telecommunications providers, it will still incentivize VRS providers to encourage higher usage of VRS by their own deaf employees, whether for good intentions or ill will.To remove the profit incentive, all minutes utilized by deaf employees should be reimbursable at-cost on a per-company basis (NOT industry-wide), instead of the public TRS Fund rate. In other words , if the TRS Fund rate is currently $6.50 a minute, and $4.90 is estimated to be the cost basis for a particular VRS provider, then each minute used by that provider’s deaf employees should be reimbursed at the internal at-cost rate of $4.90 instead of the higher public-use rate.Setting the at-cost rate for each company instead of across the industry will remove the incentive of companies with lower operational cost structures to continue receiving benefit from an industry-wide internal rate. In other words, if the internal rate is set industry-wide at $4.90, those companies whose operational costs are less than $4.90 would realize higher profits with more deaf and hard-of-hearing employees -- again, not a fair way to reimburse. A better case can be made by setting the at-cost rate on a per-company basis.As in any business, the profit incentive must and will always exist in the VRS industry.  This incentive should flow from successful development, execution and marketing of products that are highly acclaimed by deaf and hard-of-hearing consumers, not simply by hiring fewer deaf employees who could otherwise place a burden on their own operating costs.

Think Beyond The Label...Not? (UPDATE: TV ads ARE Captioned & Campaign has followed up with CNN.)

UPDATE (4:15 pm ET): I have communicated with Barbara Otto at Health & Disability Advocates and she assured me that all of the "Think Beyond The Label" campaign's TV ads and other videos, including those on YouTube, are closed-captioned. She has communicated with CNN and all other media outlets to ensure that future airings of these advertisements are closed-captioned.@BeyondTheLabel posted these two messages on Twitter:

3:19 pm ET: "We are committed to making our website and tv spot accessible, and we indeed made sure our spots were CC. We're looking into CNN's issue."

3:36 pm ET: "We have contacted CNN and all our media outlets on the TV CC issue--please DM us if you see non-CC running anywhere else!"

For what it's worth, another "Think Beyond The Label" advertisement on CNN aired at 3:45 pm and it was still not closed-captioned.It appears to be a problem with CNN. Please disregard my original post.Kudos to Barbara Otto and the "Think Beyond The Label" campaign on being so quick to respond to this issue. It shows their commitment to ensuring that everyone in the community is informed of the campaign and in particular the importance of accessibility for people with disabilities to ensure that they are as productive as, if not more so, those without disabilities in the workplace.======================UPDATE (3:00 pm ET): Barbara Otto of Health & Disability Advocates, which is leading the "Think Beyond The Label" campaign, has informed me that the TV commercial in question is indeed closed-captioned.  She is following up with CNN to find out why it wasn't captioned.==========================ORIGINAL POST (2:00 pm ET): I wrote this article earlier this week about the Think Beyond The Label advertising campaign, a $4 million all-media venture aimed at educating companies about hiring people with disabilities.  I was very pleased to see a campaign that used humor to dispel preconceived notions about the potential productivity of people with disabilities in the workplace.I was watching CNN this afternoon, as it started up its coverage of the advancing Snowmageddon of 2010, when it cut away to commercial. First up was a TV spot from Think Beyond The Label!  Delighted, I settled in to watch the spot -- when it hit me.  It is not captioned.  Or closed-captioned, either.  As a deaf person, I could not understand a word of what was being said.  I sort of got the part at the 0:20 mark about being "coffee-impaired," as a professional woman in the spot, upon hearing something that was said, immediately spit out coffee.  But that was pretty much it.For all the money they spent, and the effort they would have made in educating everyone about people with disabilities in the workplace, the people who ran the Think Beyond The Label campaign forgot the one fundamental fact: the accessibility of their very own TV commercials.  This isn't thinking beyond the label.

Abledbody.com: For The Deaf, Captioned Tours Wherever You Roam

I am writing some articles for Abledbody.com, which delivers news, insights and reviews on disability and assistive technology.  Suzanne Robitaille is the founder and editor of this wonderful site, and she just recently published a book, "The Illustrated Guide to Assistive Technology & Devices."  I have been working with Suzanne on Abledbody over the last several months.Here are the links to two articles I posted today, which are both about Keen Guides, an Arlington, Virginia-based startup which develops and delivers captioned audio and video tours for the deaf and hard-of-hearing on mobile platforms such as the iPhone.  The second article was co-written with Suzanne Robitaille.First Article: For the Deaf, Captioned Tours Wherever You RoamSecond Article: An Accessible Museum Tour In Your HandFeel free to provide comments to my articles at Abledbody.com.

That Resume Looks Fantastic! (Psst...She's Disabled.)

Last December, according to Disability Scoop, the unemployment rate for the U.S. was 9.5%. Among people with disabilities, the unemployment rate was 45 percent higher, at 13.8%.There are many possible and sometimes conflicting reasons for the 45% difference, but we can generally agree on a significant cause of this disparity: negative perceptions on the potential performance of people with disabilities in the workplace. It is an unfortunate fact of history -- we would all be living in a perfect world if everyone would be completely tolerant of people with disabilities. As the Afghani character Rahim Khan said to Amir in Khaled Hosseini’s novel Kite Runner, “In the end, the world always wins. That's just the way of things.” However, a subtle shift in perceptions makes a whole world of difference in improving tolerance toward this large and significant group.Someone thinks a blind person would not be able to lead guided tours in museums, a person with no arms cannot operate a forklift or other heavy machinery, or a person with Down syndrome cannot lead an independent lifestyle.Are these perceptions always true?  The problem with these perceptions is that they are all negative-oriented – he can’t, she can’t, they can’t. It may be true in some, but not all, cases that each of these people cannot perform these functions. But that misses the point.When you think about someone you are hiring for your business, consider: Can she do it? Can he get this done? What can that person contribute that others cannot?Can a person with an extremely severe hearing loss be an expert in music? Yes. He was Ludwig von Beethoven. Can a person with one hand become a top pitcher in Major League Baseball, and finish third in Cy Young voting in 1991? Yes. He was Jim Abbott.  Can a person with one leg finish a marathon in just over 3 hours?  Of course!  Amy Palmiero-Winters finished the 2006 Chicago Marathon with a time of 3:06. How did they achieve what they set out to do? Generally, those with disabilities who achieved their goals tended to show high levels of perseverance, originality and a determination to excel. Beethoven loved music, Abbott loved baseball, and Palmiero-Winters loved marathons (even ultra-marathons), so nothing was going to stop them. It was a matter of having the heart and energy to do what they loved. To have the passion to do what they enjoy, trumps any disability these people have.To address the issue of below-average workplace hiring of people with disabilities, an aggressive $4 million advertising campaign led by a coalition of states and non-profit organizations dedicated to people with disabilities was launched for the first half of 2010 in various U.S. media channels. Titled “Think Beyond the Label,” the campaign is running spots on television, in online and offline print, and National Public Radio to encourage businesses to consider employing people with disabilities. (Link to Abledbody.com story on the campaign.)“Think Beyond the Label” is not a typical staid, serious public service announcement. It is a witty take on the contributions that disabled people make to the workplace. A television commercial pokes fun at coffee-drinking-impaired colleagues, while eCards are sent to friends and family pointing to, among other things, a “pattern-impaired” woman who wears mismatched clothes.  Generally, the goal of this campaign is to inform and educate businesses on the value people with disabilities bring to the workplace. In other words, people with disabilities, given the proper skillset and experience, bring as much value as anyone with that skillset would bring to a specific job, so it becomes a matter of evaluating each person on his or her merits and credentials.“Think Beyond the Label” tackles popular myths that pervade the employment process for people with disabilities. In this list of myths is one popular belief: that accommodations for people with disabilities are expensive. In fact, according to “Think Beyond the Label,” a large majority of accommodations costs less than $500, which is less than a week’s pay for a person on a $30,000 annual salary.One intangible that is not mentioned in this campaign, but which is a major part of a disabled person’s approach to life, is the value of being creative in a world that is stacked against people with a physical, mental or cognitive handicap. Having endured a lifetime or near-lifetime of living with a handicap in a “world that always wins,” a person with a disability almost always comes up with an innovative, original way to cope with the handicap and make every effort to lead a high quality of life, no matter how severe the disability.No one would dispute that there are two things that accurately describe a successful person with a disability, but which are not found in his or her resume: that this person has perseverance and a never-say-die attitude.  Adapting to a disability, and coping in a world that is not always designed to accommodate this disability, takes a lot of effort and a lot of energy -- and the successful ones achieved what they set out to do because they loved their jobs and really wanted to make it work.  Those are not bad qualities to have in any job.

Gesture-Recognition Technology: Not So Far Out

So far out, even my wife didn't like the idea of this.Picture me sitting in front of the TV, flipping channels by waving my hand in the air. No remote, no controller, no anything.As strange as it sounds, this technology is actually being developed and marketed by Microsoft and Hitachi.  An article in yesterday's New York Times reports these electronics and software companies are about to sell devices that enable customers to control a TV or a computer with hand gestures. This brings to mind this scene from Tom Cruise's movie Minority Report.Considering that no one likes to lose TV remote controllers, and they are complicated to use, gesture-recognition technology makes sense (as odd as it still feels to me).  Who wants to search the living room for a lost TV remote, only to find it under the couch?  Given all this and other reasons, it would not be surprising to see this technology become widely accepted in a few short years, and for remote controls to eventually disappear from the TV and computer landscape.  With the profusion of set-top boxes and associated remote-control devices polluting the typical home entertainment center in the living room, eliminating as many physical devices as possible, and incorporating their functions into a television or computer, would do a lot toward cleaning up the living room.One of the fascinating things about new technologies is that they have uses that the original creators never anticipated.  In this case, gesture-recognition technology will have great applicability for people with disabilities.  If the technology could be developed for televisions and computers to recognize simple hand gestures, then it can be retooled for people with disabilities who have difficulty controlling their motor functions. Picture a TV watcher with cerebral palsy, who has difficulty guiding his hand in a certain direction that he/she wants, much less controlling a physical TV remote. Gesture-recognition software could be personalized to a person's preferences, so that a certain gesture that the person is comfortable with could be used to change channels, increase the volume, or carry out a task on a computer. This would eliminate the need for physical products that some people with disabilities rely on to control their television, computer, or other devices.There are already physical devices, such as this gesture-recognition glove, that are in the market or are being rolled out soon. A couple problems with them: (1) they can and will get lost, and (2) some disabled people, if given the choice, would rather have features completely incorporated into the TV or computer, rather than as a separate device that they have to handle, considering some of them have difficulty picking up physical objects.Like closed captioning, which branched out to sports bars and immigrants learning English as a second language, gesture-recognition technology will branch out beyond the TV and computer market into the large, diverse market of people with disabilities, if not other markets.  Which, considering the diversity of the disabled population and the baby-boom population approaching retirement age, could result in better-than-expected profit streams for the manufacturers of gesture-recognition products.  By reinvesting these profits into further development of better and more efficient products, this can only benefit customers with disabilities.

So Who's Disabled?

Over the weekend, I came across an article in the Adventures in Modern Life blog by Ben Mattlin, a contributing editor at Institutional Investor.  In it, he posts a letter from the mother of a 26-year-old woman with disabilities, expressing her offense at people who use inappropriate terms like "retarded" to describe people with disabilities.   Here are a couple of excerpts from the mother's letter:

I'm privately offended by the widespread casual use of the word "retarded" as a synonym for "stupid." I hear this from people with physical disabilities as well as the able-bodied. I also wince a little whenever I hear a person with physical disabilities ranting about how people are confusing him/her with a person with cognitive disabilities just because he/she is in a wheelchair....

Going even further, it's my observation that some people with physical disabilities are prejudiced against OTHER people with physical disabilities. For example, some of my friends in wheelchairs won't consider romantic involvement with another person in a wheelchair. They see the other person's disability as an impediment, because they want their partner to be able-bodied.

What opened my eyes was Mattlin's comment to his own post:

One disability group that historically distanced itself from the rest of us is the deaf community. After all, they even have their own language! I used to wonder why my phone bill has a tax for the "deaf and disabled." Isn't that redundant? I thought.

I am deaf and have always considered myself disabled.  I even write a blog that covers disability issues.  I know many friends who are deaf who consider themselves part of the disabled spectrum, and also know some deaf people who do not consider themselves disabled.  In a sense, deafness is an "invisible" disability, but it is a disability nevertheless.Now, when I consider myself disabled, I do not think of myself as not being able to function. I just view myself as not being able to use a part of my body that ordinarily would be used for many life activities.  Initially, I was tempted to respond to Mattlin's comment by disputing his perception that the deaf community is trying to be separate from the rest of the disabled community. But after I spoke to my wife, and did some research on the web, I realized that this issue is already an open can of worms, and I cannot deny that there is a history behind Mattlin's comment.In Jamie Berke's blog About.com: Deafness, she posts this very question of how deaf people view themselves. Her title words were: "Deaf Culture - Deaf? Disabled? Both?" Apparently these questions elicited powerful responses within the deaf community, as people took every conceivable position to defend or dispute the contention that being deaf is being disabled.I am not going to go into every detail brought up in Berke's posts on this issue, because there are so many strands. However, I take serious exception to the attitude prevalent among some people within the disabilities community -- and in the technical term, I mean those who do not have effective use of a major physical, mental, or cognitive ability -- to try to consider themselves "not part" of the community. Those who do not know any other people with disabilities, and/or who are comfortable with their place in the world, are still considered part of the disabled community -- even if they do not have to take an active, physical part in this community. If they actively disown the disabilities community, perhaps out of a sense of self-consciousness, or a desire to prove themselves in the world, they are entitled to their own opinions.  But they need to be sensitive to how this is perceived by others in this community, especially if they communicate their own feelings publicly.For deaf people themselves, the fact that the disability is not physically obvious may lead some of them to not consider themselves disabled. This might stick in the craw of some people within the disabled community, considering that the population of people who are deaf or hard-of-hearing is very substantial and they have clout in politics and advocacy. I get Mattlin's point -- that the term "deaf and disabled" is redundant. I literally never thought about this contradiction until he pointed it out. Apparently, a Google search of the term "deaf and disabled" resulted in a surprisingly high number of instances of this term, both in formal names and in popular usage. Deaf and Disabled Telecommunications Program. Dogs for Deaf and Disabled Americans.  On Idealist.org: "Working with deaf and disabled people."For a long time, I did not want to call myself deaf, and thus, disabled.  I preferred the term "hearing-impaired." I thought it sounded less loaded and more professional, especially in the business world. I felt a bit strange coming into a business meeting or job interview, and calling myself "deaf." It was not out of any self-consciousness, or a desire to distance myself from the deaf community. At that time, I was aware that within the deaf community, the word "deaf" has so many loaded connotations. Whereas I technically considered "deaf" to simply mean someone with a hearing loss, other people used the word "deaf" to connote cultural identification (often using capital "D" instead of "d" -- in other words, "Deaf"). Even the sign for "deaf" describes both hearing loss and not using one's voice, while the sign for "hearing" does not describe the ear at all, but the mouth. (Click on this video and see the signs for "hearing" and "deaf", starting at 0:39.) I was particularly sensitive to these signs because I grew up working very hard to learn and perfect my speaking abilities even though I was born with very profound deafness (100 db in both ears). I did not want the world to think that the deaf community was all sign and no voice, considering the physical and mental investment I put into improving my speaking and listening abilities.It was all with good intentions, but there was a problem with this approach. Every time I used the word "hearing impaired," I consciously thought of my deafness. This body language was subtly apparent in my professional and social communications with hearing people, to the point that they viewed me first through a deaf lens and then through the "Michael" lens. If I wanted them to see me first as Michael, before defining me as anything else, I needed to change how I communicated myself. I found that if I called myself "deaf," instead of "hearing-impaired," it was easier and less complicated to say, and enabled me to focus on the topic at hand instead of stumbling over longer words. Moreover, trying to use the word "hearing-impaired" in the common spoken English vernacular was very awkward, and some deaf people I spoke to did not take this in a positive way because they felt I was slighting deaf culture and distancing myself from the deaf community, or even the disabilities community as a whole.  No longer self-conscious, I do not care what people think of the term "deaf." I say it, usually with gusto, and then go on to the topic at hand.As a lifelong deaf person, I have a lot of admiration for the incredible diversity of deaf culture that has developed over many decades, along with the rich and varied history of American Sign Language and its international equivalents (British Sign Language, Indian Sign Language, etc.), and the oral and auditory-verbal traditions that also developed at the same time through the A.G. Bell Association and other related associations.  I wish there were more politically correct signs for "deaf" and "hearing," but these signs are so deeply ingrained in communicative usage that I use them often without thinking about what they mean.  I have many close friends in both the ASL and oral/auditory-verbal camps, and usually many of them are in both camps.So yes, I'm disabled. What's wrong with that?(Disclosure: I am an active member of the A.G. Bell Association.)

Making Videogames Accessible for Disabled Gamers: The Value of Brand Equity

For many people, videogames are a luxury, a guilt trip, like eating a piece of sinful chocolate. It is not always looked on favorably, usually by parents, if videogames are played more than a few hours each day. For people with disabilities, the perspective is refreshingly different. Video games have been an effective way for some people to deal with their disability and, in some cases, help them function more effectively and independently by sharpening their physical, mental and developmental abilities. Among those whose disabilities greatly limit their mobility and/or cognition, certain videogames such as MMORPG's (massively multiplayer online role playing games) enable them to pursue a lifestyle that helps keep them connected to the world at large and provide some measure of independence. However, the video game industry, as a whole, does not generally develop games with the disabled customer in mind.   In my opinion, they are missing out on a great way to improve their games' brand equity.Last month, during the 2009 Spike TV Video Game Awards, Stevie Wonder presented the Best Music Game award to “The Beatles: Rock Band.” Then he said, “Throughout the world, an estimated 650 million people, or 10% of the population, have a disability. As one of the 10%, I want to see the companies that make these video games, make them accessible, so people like me can enjoy them too.” This met with cheers from the crowd.Why is this an important issue for the disabled gaming community? The reasons are many:

1. Blind people cannot easily see the graphics in video games. Increasingly, video games are dominated by complex and detailed graphics. Alternate color schemes and descriptive audio can be developed by designers to enable blind people to participate in these games.2. Deaf people cannot understand the audibly spoken words. With more and more games utilizing audio cues and spoken words, there is a need for continued support of captioning to supplement these spoken words.3. Individuals with limited use of their hands cannot play regular joysticks or consoles, and must instead use special equipment to enable them to play the game.4. Even many MMORPG games are out of reach for some disabled people who cannot type, or who type slowly. Since communication is an essential part of effective MMORPG play, these gamers either have to play without communication, or would rather not communicate because of the fear that slow typing would put off the other players in the game.

These are only the tip of the iceberg. Many other examples abound of video games that are inaccessible to elements of the disabled population.  Even if people with disabilities are able to play and enjoy many different videogames, the game experience is incomplete if some gameplay elements are not accessible.According to Information Solutions Group, more than 20% of casual videogame players have a physical, mental or developmental disability, a percentage that is higher than the percentage of the general population that identifies itself as disabled (between 10% and 15%). And these gamers play more frequently, for more hours a week, and for longer times per gaming session. A surprising statistic: of those gamers who are disabled, almost 70% are female – which literally flips the gender gap on an activity that is invariably considered to be male-oriented. Another interesting statistic shows that those with mental or physical disabilities viewed video gaming as a way to relieve stress, while those with developmental or learning disabilities found that video gaming led to improved concentration and coordination/manual dexterity.Many video game developers do not always take disabled gamers into account when designing their games, because subconsciously the diversity of disabilities is mind-boggling – the perfect heterogeneous sample that, in their minds, would render efficient implementation of accessible features impossible without a commitment of significant resources. In ROI-speak, this would not be an "effective" use of these resources. Another reason that is brought up is that the population of disabled gamers is not big enough to justify the investment.The reality is, many of the video game barriers can be overcome easily with a good bit of game design and a demonstrated commitment by developers and programmers to address these issues in close communication with designers and proponents of video game accessibility. For example, EA Sports now releases a version of its Madden football series, called “My Football Game,” which is designed for the special needs gamer. It looks and feels like a Madden game, but with customizable playing speeds, and a “Step Up” feature that enables the gamer to practice football skills before going into game mode. It was developed in close consultation with VTree, a leader in the special needs software industry. Another game, World of Warcraft, uses Color Blind 4.0 to help color-blind gamers distinguish the shades of color that is essential to good gameplay. (Disclosure: I have no association with these video game developers, and have never played these games. I am a strategy and simulation guy, with a weakness for the Civilization series.)There is even a group dedicated to accessible gaming for the disabled, called the AbleGamers Foundation, which runs AbleGamers.com. Among other things, AbleGamers.com writes reviews of video games that incorporate accessibility rankings for visual, hearing, and mobility disabilities.When I came across some discussion threads in various game forums about making videogames accessible to people with disabilities, I found some ignorance on the value that disabled gamers bring to the videogame industry – to wit, that the disabled population isn’t big enough for video game designers to engineer games with them in mind. Maybe, but when the worldwide video gamer market is pegged at 300 to 400 million users, those with disabilities would range between 60 and 80 million based on the Information Solutions Group survey. Keeping in mind that disabled gamers constitute a larger proportion of the video game market compared to the general population, there is certainly benefit in devoting some resources to ensuring that the games are accessible to the 20% of its own market that plays videogames longer, more deeply, and more often than the typical video gamer.Even if a significant slice of the disabled gamer market does not have a need for any accessible features, and even if the disabled population is not homogeneous enough to justify an efficient implementation of accessible features, making a concerted effort to align a video game with the capabilities of a disabled gamer would go a long way toward building respect and brand equity for the game itself.Closed captioning on TV is a great analogy. It was developed in the early 1980’s for the deaf and hard-of-hearing market, which comprises approximately 8%-10% of the U.S. population, and of which a small slice of it has a major need for captioning. A major effort was made at the national level to implement and ultimately expand captioning to the major broadcast networks, and then onto cable and movies. Starting in the mid-1990’s, a federal law required all new TV’s to be equipped with a closed captioning chip. Now, closed captioning is a regular feature of the TV landscape, with unexpected applications beyond the deaf and hard-of-hearing market. Sports bars and restaurants love it because it enables patrons to follow games and CNBC over ambient noise. Non-English-speaking immigrants to the United States, as well as people who cannot read, have used closed captioning as excellent practice for learning English, by connecting the written word (the captions) with the spoken word (what is being said on the screen) – dramatically increasing literacy rates.When a gamer – disabled or not – sees the availability of accessibility features on a game he plays, he/she may or may not use it depending on his preferences. But, invariably, the gamer will recall that the designers of that game took the effort to include these features. This will increase the positive perception of the brand of the game itself.

Your 50-Cent Contribution: Part Deux

(Note: This is a followup to my December 3rd post on the Video Relay Services arrests. Click here for the original article.)This Thursday, in the aftermath of the November 19 arrests of 26 people in the Video Relay Services (VRS) industry for allegedly defrauding the U.S. Government of up to $50 million in Federal Communications Commission (FCC) funds, the FCC will hold a three-hour “Workshop on VRS Reform,” a panel discussion to evaluate the effectiveness of the VRS program. The panelists invited to participate in this workshop represent a cross-section of the telecommunications and disability worlds, including an expert on accessible and inclusive technology, professors of communications at two universities, and representatives of several agencies representing the deaf, including Telecommunications for the Deaf Inc. (TDI) and the National Association for the Deaf (NAD).In its initial announcement of the workshop, the FCC touched on three key areas: how effectively VRS can be delivered, how the VRS companies would be fairly compensated, and how VRS fraud can be dealt with. In this announcement are perhaps the two words that will deliver a major impact on the future of VRS: “competitive bidding.”As the arrangement is currently set up, VRS companies must meet certain criteria set by the FCC to be eligible for the funds distributed by the National Exchange Carriers Association (NECA), which currently sets the rate at $6.50 per minute, or $390 per hour. Since Barack Obama became President in January, there has been a significant delay in the issuance of certificates to new VRS companies that submitted applications for such certification. (The number of VRS companies has increased in the past several years, from a starting base of three to approximately 12 now, give or take a few.) A source I know mentioned that the delay was in part because of the slow pace of staffing government positions with new Obama Administration appointees, but also because the new administration may have believed that the FCC under the Bush Administration was too laissez-faire in its approach to certifying VRS companies for fund eligibility. Since Obama was elected President, he has strongly emphasized accountability and transparency in government. The FBI investigation into the VRS fraud, which started this past spring, likely gave the FCC the explicit rationale to hold off on granting new certificates.Now, with the recent arrests in November, the FCC may have the political cover it needs to change the way the NECA funds are administered and distributed. Until the workshop announcement came out two weeks ago, the thought of "competitive bidding" for NECA funds never crossed my mind. The prospect of limiting the number of companies in the VRS industry to a finite number presents both opportunity and danger.  Is this in the best interests of the deaf and hard-of-hearing community?Telephone and cellphone consumers are financing the VRS program to the tune of a couple quarters a month per consumer, and deaf and hard-of-hearing people – like me -- are able to make make VRS calls for free. Of course, we need a broadband Internet connection and a phone line for which we pay for, to make the VRS service work. I admit to being a bit surprised by the fact that I could make international calls to Canada and Italy on your dime.The philosophy of making phone calls for free on someone else’s money does seem, on first thought, objectionable. But to me it makes sense. If deaf people want to use the VRS service effectively, they need a computer, and a DSL or cable connection, for which they must pay for. For hearing people, all they need is a phone – they do not need other devices. So, it makes sense that deaf people should be “reimbursed” for their use of their own computer and broadband Internet, through the use of free calls. Back in the days when deaf people used TTY’s, it took them up to 10 times as long as hearing people to conduct phone calls, because the transmission speed of TTY’s was extremely slow, and the words-per-minute rate of a typed communication was slower than the spoken equivalent. In other words, deaf people had to pay up to 10 times more than hearing people, especially for long-distance calls. Phone companies eventually provided discounted per-minute rates to deaf telephone customers, as long as the customers provided evidence of their hearing loss.But making free calls to Italy? It doesn’t happen often, but when it does, I would think that there has to be a fairness standard with respect to the cost of an international call. Full disclosure: I was happily able to call some hotels in Spain to make reservations, and my wife made arrangements to rent a car in Northern Ireland the same way.The NECA rate of $6.50 per minute is set to compensate VRS companies for the cost of operating the VRS services. I do not have an in-depth look into the typical financials of a VRS company, but I believe the rate also takes into account the cost that the deaf consumer would otherwise pay for a phone call. With VRS usage exploding over the past several years, stretching the NECA funds to their limits, there will certainly be a re-examination of the NECA rate level. The increased VRS usage also necessitates a need for more consistent monitoring by the FCC of VRS companies’ operations, especially on the issue of the amount of call minutes the companies submit to the NECA for reimbursement. As implied in its announcement, the FCC is concerned that too many VRS companies are being certified, stretching the ability of the agency to monitor these companies to ensure their reimbursement requests are legal. Hence, the prospect of competitive bidding.But in its haste for better monitoring and accountability, is the FCC going to put a muzzle on competition and innovation within the VRS industry? Over the last three years, VRS companies have reinvested the revenue collected from the NECA into new features, devices and service improvements intended to improve the customer experience and ensure better operation of the service. Several new companies have started up over the last 2-3 years with more innovative business models, increasing the competitive bar and putting pressure on more established companies like Sorenson and Purple to provide better service.If the FCC moves to competitive bidding, putting a limit on the number of VRS companies eligible for NECA funds, some of the new startups will go out of business. Those that are eligible for funds – and I believe this might be limited to perhaps four – will experience decreased competition. Granted, they will compete with each other, they will be better monitored by the FCC to ensure their practices are legal, and they still need to provide a solid customer experience. But the level of innovation will not be the same.It is a catch-22. On the one hand, the new features that have emerged in the VRS market over the last several years, such as the VPAD and the Ojo, have been a boon for deaf consumers, improving their calling experience, and putting them on a much better par with their hearing counterparts on the ability to use the telephone. But the increasing number of companies licensed to receive funds, and the lack of transparency and accountability, may have opened the door to misuse of funds that were intended to benefit the deaf and hard-of-hearing community. The irony is that, if the charges handed down by the FBI are proven in Federal court, then some deaf people stole money intended to benefit them. A person commented on the Alldeaf.com forum: “Taking advantage of the government is one thing using people who are disabled to do it rather pisses me off.”Yet if the FCC limits the number of companies eligible for these funds in the interest of better monitoring, then the VRS calling experience is in danger of being degraded. It is one thing to be accountable to the U.S. government when submitting the bill of reimbursable minutes, but it is another thing to ensure that the sign language interpreters are highly qualified, and that the technical operations run flawlessly. There are no policy guidelines at the moment on what constitutes a qualified sign language interpreter for a VRS service, or a certain technical floor above which the VRS platform must run effectively.If the FCC plans to introduce competitive bids – thus shrinking the number of companies in the VRS market – then it must also implement policies to improve the quality of the experience, and set standards intended to preserve competition within the industry. If these guidelines are implemented, it provides the companies with an incentive to compete with each other for the best experience. The FCC must also be strict in the application of the certifications granted to the VRS companies: if a VRS company falls below a certain quality or profitability standard, then it should not be eligible for the next round of funds.In business, there has to be a good deal of fear. Fear that your business will go bankrupt, because another company could have a better product than yours, or provide better pricing or customer service. If the FCC takes some of these competitors out of the equation, the fear will not be there, and thus there will be less incentive to improve your product or service.I am going to watch tomorrow's hearing with a good deal of interest.

Running on Artificial Legs in Cambodia

When I came across this Tuesday's New York Times article about an annual 10k race in Cambodia for athletes with artificial legs, as part of the Angkor Wat International Half-Marathon, I was intrigued, because I visited this country two years ago. In the summer of 2007, my then-girlfriend (now wife) and I traveled through Laos and Cambodia and had an amazing time in these Southeast Asian countries. When we arrived in Siem Reap, Cambodia after several days in Laos, we walked its streets, checking out the local crowds and wondering what it was like for them to grow up in a country that is slowly recovering from the horrors of the Khmer Rouge. What immediately struck me was the realization that most of the people on the streets appeared to be under 30 years old, with little or no memory of the ravages of forced work labor under Pol Pot and the famine that followed under Vietnamese occupation. And that, among those aged over 30, a few of them were missing limbs and/or otherwise disfigured – presumably from the wars and famines of the 1970’s.Admittedly our visit was mostly sanitized – we visited Angkor Wat and the many historic ruins surrounding Siem Reap, stayed in the Foreign Correspondents Club in both Siem Reap and Phnom Penh, and toured the sights in Phnom Penh including the Royal Palace, the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum and the haunting Choeung Ek fields, whose green meadows barely cover the scars of mass graves of thousands of people killed by Khmer Rouge soldiers.Yet during this visit I was able to get a sense of the real Cambodia beyond the tourist attractions -- whole families on motorbikes riding through streets, locals in a poor neighborhood besieging my driver as he stepped out to buy water, and the occasional if not unusual sight of someone without an arm or a leg. That Cambodia and, in particular, Siem Reap could include 3,500 people with artificial legs from around the world (including 1,700 Cambodians) in the various Angkor Wat half-marathon events, is a commentary on the country’s determination in dealing with its past. And just as importantly, if not more so, there are evidently people in Cambodia who make a genuine effort to increase the level of acceptance of people with disabilities within society, in a country with an unusually high concentration of people with disabilities within its general population primarily due to war, famine, and more recently, land mine accidents. (The proceeds from the half-marathon events go toward purchasing artificial limbs for land mine victims, among other efforts.)While in college at Brown University, I met a fellow student, Arn Chorn-Pond (click here for Chorn-Pond's bio) in a class we both attended. When Chorn-Pond was a child growing up in Cambodia, he survived the Khmer Rouge's killing fields by playing the flute to keep Pol Pot’s soldiers entertained. At Brown, he noticed that I was using a sign language interpreter to understand the professor in our class. He walked up to me, introduced himself, and commented on his amazement that I was able to rely on this type of support to get me through college. He said in Cambodia there are many people who are deaf who do not have the same kind of opportunities I have, and there are so many people who became blinded from Khmer Rouge's genocidal practices, war injuries and the land mines that dot the Cambodian landscape. He said there was little support in Cambodia for people with disabilities. That was in the late 1980’s.I was constantly reminded of his words when we traveled through Cambodia. When we visited the Bakong ruins outside Siem Reap, we came upon a group of blind musicians soliciting money. There was a sign near them indicating they were victims of land mines, and also a cup for coins. I cannot vouch for the authenticity of this group, as we have come across many beggars who may be controlled by people behind the scenes who get a cut of the donations. Yet, the reality is, they're blind, they were children during the Khmer Rouge regime and the war with Vietnam, and one cannot imagine what they experienced then.Cambodia is increasingly becoming modernized -- its first skyscraper is going up in Phnom Penh, and, prior to the 2009 global financial crisis, its economy expanded very rapidly. It is not without its many issues, as corruption is rife within its political system, and the child sex trade has been a serious, ongoing problem. Its population is booming -- over 75% of Cambodians are under age 30 and memories of the Khmer Rouge are fading. With all that is going on today, the legacy of Pol Pot is in danger of being cast aside. Yet, after what Arn Chorn-Pond told me two decades ago about the difficult experiences of people with disabilities in his homeland, the annual Angkor Wat half-marathon event is progress enough, a well-deserved recognition of the perseverance of disabled Cambodians in bettering themselves and maintaining their pride and dignity.