deafbiz.com

Watch how Jason Curry, Inventor and Owner of Scommonline.com communicate with his hearing buddy at a donut shop.

Here’s another story that will add fuel to the fire about Cochlear Implant debate:

Girl Dies of Bacterial Meningitis

Doctors said bacterial meningitis is not contagious. They believe it may have been caused by Katie’s cochlear implant. They said it could have been prevented with a vaccination.”I had tried and they were always out,” Engle said. “After going back several times, I forgot about it.”

I gotta really ask the hard hitting questions:

Who said that bacterial meningitis is related to CI?
When did she have her CI surgery?
Why was it so difficult to get the vaccination?
Why did the doctor(s) go ahead with CI surgery when she didn’t have vaccination?
Did the doctors know or didn’t know she had her vaccination?

I hope this is a lesson learn “the hard way” for all prospective CI patients and their doctors. But I would say in this case protocols were not followed!

I know the protocols because I had all my shots before the CI surgery!

Found a new free services that will transcribe voice calls to email or SMS

Jott 

It has a very eye-catching Flash animation demonstrating what it can do.

I contacted customer services asking if this would be suitable for a hearing person to call Jott and leave a message to be transcribed for a deaf person to read via email or SMS and the answer was “Absolutely! This is a great idea for accessibility”.

My concern is the time between the Jott phone call and the transcriibed message. Probably not something you would do if time is of essence.

If you’ve tried using it, please share the experience in the comment box.

Ever have a video that you want it to be captioned or subtitled but turned off by the high price? Or have you watched any deaf video and wanted to add funny comments? Go to BubblePly and sign up. Works with YouTube, Google Video, ifilm, etc.
If you wish to “Bubble” your own video, you will need to host it on one of the approved video hosting or community web sites and then come back to BubblePLY.com with the URL.

Oh, and do you know that it’s free?

If only there’s a similar service for podcasting

Kudos to Scommonline for working very hard to get the word out about UbiDuo and for Kokonut Pundits to bring this to my attention. The local FoxNews TV station did a show and it’s a great video of how UbiDuo works:

Device Gives More Independence To Hard of Hearing

Though it’s not subtitled on the web, Kokonut Pundit did the transcription.

FYI, WinfreePCS Inc. has purchased two UbiDuos for demo around Rochester, NY. If you want to see it in action, please fill out the contact form on their website or on this weblog as well.