deafbiz.com

Coulda be easier to just write it off as a loss and buy a new SideKick II, but instead this story got a lot of publicity, due to the idiots taking pictures.

Update 1: This saga was printed in New York Times

Update 2: This saga was updated at The Consumerist - The friend filed a police report whereas the 16 year old gir was arrested and the Sidekick II was confisticated.

Wanna bet that it would’ve been so much cheaper for the girl to BUY a prepaid Sidekick II than to pay for a lawyer and accumulate an arrest record? Stupid kid! She messed with the wrong Sidekick 2 owner!

Just a cautionary tale that I’ve heard second hand. But the info comes from a lawyer very familiar with the SSI/SSD regulations and the deaf community so I wouldn’t discont this as rumor. However, I don’t have the time to investigate so maybe someone else can.

FYI, SSI/SSD can require a medical history update every 2 years.

This lawyer is hearing through the grapevine that many deaf people that have SSI/SSD and then have a Cochlear Implant are now starting to comply with the SSI/SSD rule to update their medical history. As soon as the SSI/SSD reviewer finds out that they now have a CI, they get cut off from SSI/SSD without much of a warning, on ground that they’re no longer “hearing-impaired” but instead their ears are “fixed” (repaired). Doesn’t matter how well one can hear with a CI, their hearing is “repaired” and now employable.

I personally know of one individual who truly relies on SSI and went through the hoops with Medicaid to pay for her CI surgery (finally scheduled for July after over a year process) This person was just informed of this and now has to make a gut-wrenching decision to decide which is more important -  CI or SSI.

So if anyone has knowledge about this issue, would be nice to know if this is true or not.

I don’t watch evening news that much but by sheer luck, I saw this broadcast about Bapin, the Blind-Deaf Tech Wiz.

(If I was a CBS reporter, I would’ve asked Bapin how he would like to be addressed as - deaf-blind or blind-deaf).

Technology for the deaf-blind has gone a long way now!

The Blind-Deaf Tech Wiz
One Man Is Inventing Technology To Lead An Independent Life

(CBS) Technology changes all of our lives every day, but, as CBS News correspondent Michelle Miller reports, it’s hard to think of anyone who stands to gain more from technological innovation than those who have lost their hearing and sight.

People like Anindya Bhattacharyya, who is both blind and deaf. He has a mission: to live as independently as possible and to change the lives of hundreds of thousands of people like himself throughout the world.

It’s what brought Bapin, as he’s better known, to the Helen Keller National Center in Long Island, New York.

“I didn’t know I was going to be a techie in the tech world,” Bapin says in sign language.

He is more than that, he is a tech wiz. He not only teaches students, but he has helped technology companies develop new gadgets that allow the blind and deaf to navigate the seeing, hearing world.

“I like to empower them to be successful in whatever they attempt,” he told Miller through an interpreter. “I feel that it’s a good thing that I do.”

It’s a long way from the dirt poor village of his native India, where he was born deaf 35 years ago. Bapin came to America after a troubled child-hood and fell in love with the field of high tech.

His contribution has been in research and development. Bapin’s done field tests on the Braille modified lap top phone, used by the blind-deaf to talk to the rest of the world via a speaking operator.

He’s also helped develop the Tactile Talking Tablet which allows people like him to explore street grids of cities they plan to visit.

Then there’s the SBC – or screen Braille communicator – which the deaf-blind can use to do their shopping, order meals in restaurants or communicate with an air-line cabin crew. Bapin himself travels the world using the same equipment.

And there’s the portable Global Satellite Positioning System. It helps Bapin navigate while his interpreter, Jane Hecker-Cain, drives.

The device is so good, it allows Bapin to help more than someone who can see.

“The sighted person depends on me,” Bapin says.

“He found my husband’s place of employment,” Hecker-Cain says. “I told him the address which we just passed, and he just named the name of the company – that’s pretty cool.”

Joe McNulty is the director of the Hellen Keller National Center and Bapin’s boss.

“Bapin is clearly one of the brightest deaf-blind people I have ever met,” he says. And McNulty thinks Bapin is a role model for the students he instructs.

“We have people working for major companies now where they are handling a client or a customer’s account through the Internet, and the person has no idea they are communicating with an employee who happens to be deaf-blind,” he says.

Ironically, Bapin says he would have never found his calling if he hadn’t been blinded at the age of nine by a jealous kid who threw ashes in his eyes. He tells Miller that becoming blind was a blessing in disguise.

Bapin plans to spend the rest of his life passing on his knowledge and enthusiasm to his students – a case, quite literally, of the blind leading the blind.

©MMVI, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.

About time there’s more deaf people winning in Reality Shows.

Greg Gunderson is “gunning” (pun intended) to be the top #5 voted to be racing cars for a living.

Vote as many times as you can. You can even vote on your Sidekick, BlackBerry and maybe Treo!

Vote 10 times per hour, just keep on voting! (No bots please, they will detect it).

Get the word out in the deaf community as well.

Got this in the comments and thought it’s worth of a new posting:

MURDER OF MY DEAF HUSBAND IN MOSCOW

To: President and Members of the Executive Board of the International Olympic Committee

Subject: Murder of My Deaf Husband,
        CISS/Deaflympics President Ammons and
        $110,000.00 Assistance by IOC

Dear IOC President and Board Members:

On
March 2, 2006, via the International Mail I sent to your IOC office in
Lausanne my letter to President. Several weeks later on, through my
friend, I again e-mailed a copy of my March 2 letter to your office.

To my big regret, I have never received any response from the IOC or its officials to these 2 letters at all.

Now,
I must share with you a very appalling news: the police had finally
found in a remote part of the city of Moscow a dead body of my husband
- Felix Shlimovich.

Felix’s body was in a bad and awful shape - his face was a deformed one, one eye was missing and much more.

I
write to you again to tell you that all this happened because of one
person with whom the IOC continues to do business - Donalda Ammons, the
CISS President.

I have plenty evidence to support my position,
that is, because of  Ammons, my husband was kidnapped and murdered by
Ammons’  deaf Russian people in Moscow.

On my March 2 letter I explained to you that Felix sued Ammons and her Russian accomplice Slava Klimov for property theft.

Ammons twice - on March 17, 2004 and May 17, 2004 - evaded to appear at the court trial in Washington, D.C.

If
there was ever held a live court trial, Ammons and her Russian
accomplice would have lost the case because Felix had a very solid
proof and number of credible witnesses to demonstrate the irrefutable
evidence that the two - Ammons and Slava Klimov - did indeed commit an
act of theft.

Because of the above and in order not to ruin
their personal reputation, Ammons and her accomplice Slava Klimov were
very afraid to face justice at the court of law.

So, the idea to eliminate Felix came up from Ammons and Slava - the two Gallaudet University-based employees in Washington, D.C.

That
is, before next scheduled January 18, 2006 trial date - Slava, in order
to protect his own and Ammons’ integrity and through his deaf father
Nikolay Klimov - took a very desperate act.

Slava contacted and convinced  his own father - Nikolay - to do something against Felix.

On December 11, 2005, Nikolay hired and financed deaf killers in Moscow to kidnap and murder Felix.

This way Felix was eliminated from his life’s existence on the night of December 11, 2005!

THE
CLEAR FACT WAS THAT HAD AMMONS NEVER SOUGHT HELP FOR HER OWN SEPARATE
LAWSUIT CASE PROBLEMS FROM HER YOUNG RUSSIAN FRIEND AND COLLABORATOR -
SLAVA KLIMOV  - IN THE FIRST PLACE, THEN NOTHING TERRIBLE WOULD HAVE
HAPPENED TO FELIX.

I blame Ammons for getting involved both
Klimovs - father and son - in her own initial legal problem in 2001
and, later on, for her involvement - directly or indirectly - in
stealing of Felix’s property in 2002, then kidnapping and murder of
Felix in 2005.

In spite of the horrible behavior by Ammons, recently I read through the www.deaflympics.com
website that the IOC gave away its financial assistance of $110,000.00
to the CISS organization, which is still headed by Ammons.

Is
it proper for the IOC to do business with an organization such as the
CISS, whose president was implicated in kidnapping and murder of my
husband?

Will it be appropriate for Ammons as a president of an
international sports organization, who did not make any effort in
thwarting the December 11, 2005 criminal act tragedy against Felix, to
award medals to athletes at the medal podium of next week’s World
Championships for the Deaf in Cycling in California, USA?

I would like very much to hear your answers to these 2 important questions from you, the IOC.

Will you please  inform me if you will answer to these 2 questions or not?

Because
of distance, lack of money and weak international judicial system (
there is no appropriate court of law to file a criminal charge lawsuit
against Ammons-the troublemaker-initiator anywhere ), Felix’s grieving
father, brother and I are very helpless to do anything by bringing the
USA -based resident Ammons and her Russian killers together to justice
for their horrendous acts of kidnapping and murder of Felix.

Lately,
after Felix’s body was found out, I and my deaf friends-supporters in
Moscow and New York have been receiving death threats from Ammons’
people because Ammons’ people want to silence us over the news of
kidnapping, murder and body finding of my husband.

What can the IOC do for me and my friends-supporters in this regard?

Please provide your response.

With Tears in Eyes,

Irina Im Sen  Shlimovich