deafbiz.com

Kokonut Pundit hits another homerun with his posting titled “Pinkberry“.

Of course, being a UbiDuo seller, my opinion may be biased

The key operative word is WORK, as in what works? What faciliates communication between the deaf and hearing in the most effective manner?

Besides sign language and lipreading, what else works in face to face communication?

A pen and paper pad works. A Nintendo DS works (yes, someone uses it as a communication tool with the built-in graffiti program). Email, IM and/or SMS between two cell phones may work, if available. And of course, the UbiDuo works.

A messenger toy? It depends on reliability (how long until it breaks), keyboard, speed of sending and receiving messages, etc. Only time will tell if it will yet be another tool of communication. I’m not holding my breath on this one. Given the choice between the toy thingy and the pen/pad, I’ll take the pen/pad combo any day.

I want to thank SprintRelay.tv for their sponsorship of Deaf Resource Center. Without their support I would not be able to keep the website updated more often.

I encourage all to consider using SprintRelay.tv for your VRS services.

Found it at CNN’s Money section where readers submitted bulls**t jobs and I didn’t expect to see Relay Services Operator on the list.

Relay is supposed to be a service for the deaf, hard of hearing, and speech disabled where a person using the Internet, cell phone or text telephone reaches an operator, I dial a number for them and relay conversation between a text and voice user.

90 percent of the calls we get are from people who are not deaf, most of them are scam calls or prank calls, so for eight hours a day, 40 hours a week I relay bogus conversations. The benefits are good though. The turnover rate is extraordinary. A few weeks of Nigerian scam calls and teenagers with nothing else to do can take a toll on some people.

Pay: 10.00-10.50 starting with the availability of a promotion after 6 months.

Can anyone from the Relay Services verify that 90% of the calls are NOT from or to deaf people? That’s pretty high and a huge waste of taxpayer’s money.

When there’s a disaster, Red Cross is there. What happens if the disaster victim happens to be deaf? How can a hearing rescuer communicate?

UbiDuo to the rescue!!

Rochester Red Cross now has TWO UbiDuos - one in the office and one in the disaster rig.

Thanks to 13Wham.com, Rochester NY’s ABC Television station for getting the word out.

If you want you local Red Cross to considering purchasing the UbiDuo, please contact Winfreepcs.com for assistance.

(full disclosure - Judy S. Gunter, webmaster of deafbiz.com is also Manager of winfreepcs.com and has helped Red Cross with the UbiDuos).

From LifeHacker:

Stuck in the UK trying desperately to figure out how to sign “where’s the loo?” Then point your cellie to MobileSign.org, a visual dictionary of British sign language. You enter the word to look up, and Mobilesign will spit back a downloadable video viewable on your phone demonstrating how to sign the word.

Mobilesign was created by the Centre for Deaf Studies. Nothing against you Brits, but I want this so bad for American sign language it hurts

Zdnet has more details.

Anyone know of something similar in ASL? And will it work in Treo 650?