In this morning’s AGBell Update, the Alexander Graham Bell Association of the Deaf called on its members to contact Pepsico and object to its Super Bowl commercial, complaining that it “perpetuates a common myth that all people who are deaf can only communicate using sign language.” The blurb reads:

AG Bell Speaks Up on Pepsi Super Bowl Commercial

AG Bell’s Board President, Karen Youdelman, and Executive Director, Alexander T. Graham, spoke up about Pepsi’s upcoming Super Bowl commercial featuring a deaf storyline (http://www.pepsi.com/bobshouse/). In a letter written to PepsiCo corporate executives, Youdelman and Graham stated, “Although we appreciate Pepsi’s efforts to encourage new promotional ideas from your rank-and-file employees and your willingness to celebrate diversity, we would be remiss if we did not call your attention to the fact that…your advertisement perpetuates a common myth that all people who are deaf can only communicate using sign language.”

Youdelman and Graham then called upon PepsiCo to continue “…to educate the public…and promote appreciation for those individuals that go above and beyond to overcome the absence of something many of us take for granted - the miracle of sound.”

AG Bell encourages its members to contact us at info@agbell.org or Pepsi directly at http://www.pepsiusa.com/help/help.php?or= with your comments.

First of all, there is nothing in the Pepsico Super Bowl commercial that “promotes” sign language except for the mere appearance of it nor does it imply that all deaf people use sign language. It intends to convert people into loyal Pepsico customers. In this case, and ironically, methinks AGBell doth protest too much.

If Pepsico did an ad with deaf people who have “near-perfect” speech, I wouldn’t have a problem with that either. Heather Whitestone, considered an uber poster child for AGBell, had people practically swooning over her speech skills during the 1995 Miss America Pageant. The subsequent attitude of many hearing people towards deaf people was “why don’t they learn to speak like Heather?” Although Whitestone received her share of criticism, I don’t recall any specific organizations officially calling for a mass protest of Whitestone due to her actions perpetuating a “common myth”. Simply put, some can speak, some can sign, some can cue, some can do all, some can do some, and that’s all there is to it.

Over the years the Oralism vs. ASL dispute has been played out mostly by individual members and some radical groups while their respective national organizations stood on the sidelines, wisely avoiding the fracas and instead focusing on furthering their missions. Surprisingly, that is no longer the case with AGBell’s announcement. They need to re-learn the art of persuasion. For example, AGBell could have simply congratulated PepsiCo on their inclusion of at least one segment of the deaf population, and ended on a more positive note, informing Pepsico that its members may not relate to the commercial.

But ultimately, the Superbowl commercial failed to convert me over to Pepsi because I’m staunchly sticking by my Diet Coke, yo.

Update:

AGBell has posted their letter to Pepsi on their homepage. To see the letter, click here (PDF document). Some excerpts:

Since you have chosen the Super Bowl as the forum to launch this campaign, and because of Pepsi’s size and stature, we feel a responsibility to offer our perspective on this somewhat misleading stereotype presented in your advertisement.

Your advertisement perpetuates a common myth that all people who are deaf can only communicate using sign language and are, therefore, isolated from the rest of society.

We would also like to remind you that with the amount of money Pepsi will spend on just one 60 second spot to air during the Super Bowl, you could help an untold number of families obtain hearing aids and other professional services that are costly and in many cases not covered by medical insurance.

Update II:

The NAD President, Bobbie Beth Scoggins, has responded to AGBell’s letter. To see their letter, click here. An exerpt:

We are disappointed with the negative tone of your letter and obvious lack of respect for deaf people who use ASL. We are also sensitive to the fact that many members of the AGBell deaf and hard of hearing section know and use ASL. We find it deplorable that AGBell continues to perpetuate the myth that the use of ASL isolates deaf people from mainstream society, a stereotype that is far from the truth. We know that this is not the first time that AGBell has reacted in this manner to high-profile use of ASL, which AGBell may perceive as detracting from its exclusive focus on speaking and listening. As such, we are not surprised that AGBell continues to close its eyes to successful deaf ASL users as positive role models.

There’s a strong stench coming from Thailand. It stemmed from the fast-growing controversy concerning how the sign language interpreters in that country identify prominent politicians. Samak Sundaravej, the first elected prime minister since a September coup two years ago, has been crowned “Mr. Rose Apple Nose” because of a strong resemblance to the fruit. Accordingly, the sign language interpreters are holding their noses. Literally.

That particular sign generally indicate that something/someone stinks. And that perception is angering the members and supporters of Samak’s party, who feel such a sign is not quite becoming of a national leader. They even went as far as to petition the National Association of the Deaf in Thailand to remove the offending sign. An interpreter, Kanittha Rattanasin, noted that the gesture of holding the nose between two fingers in reference to Samak has been used for a long time now but now gaining national attention because of a live telecast of Monday’s parliamentary session. “…people noticed this time because we had to repeat the movement over 300 times,” she explained.

It’s common practice for Thai sign language interpreters to indicate facial features as symbols for people of high rank, and they are not the only ones. In America, the sign for William J. Clinton was the letter C handshape while signing LIE/LIAR. A Democrat wasn’t the only one with that particular honor. Substitute the C handshape for the N handshape and you’re talking about Richard Nixon, the Republican president in the 1970s.

People used the GUN TO HEAD sign in an letter R handshape whenever the subject of Ronald Reagan came up. Abraham Lincoln was referred to by the HAT/CAP sign twice, using the A handshape and the L handshape. James Carter was a peanut farmer before he attained the highest political office, so hence the C handshape flicking off of the top of the teeth. The first president, George Washington (no relation to me…far as I know), had the honor of the GENERAL sign two times in quick succession, with the G handshape and the W handshape.

Regardless, there will always be signs of questionable funk and people crying afoul over them. Now that we are in the midst of an election cycle, what signs–whether posititve or negative–have been attributed so far to the current crop of presidential candidates?

But one thing is for sure…nobody knows a stink like the nose.

As I look around and talk to many of my democratic friends, two things tend to stand out: 1) They mostly support Obama and his vision for “change” 2) No one knows what the change is, how it will come about, and what precisely Obama will do to make this happen. As an avid followers of politics, more so this election cycle around for obvious reasons, I am left dumb-founded when I look around at Obama supporters. Granted, he is extremely intelligent, charming, and a well versed speaker but one aspect eludes him: a valid platform.

He has screamed out for “CHANGE” at the top his lungs, but does anyone know what exactly he means by change? If by change he means changing of a President that is inevitable. If by change he means changing of the way the country is run, that is inevitable as well. If by change he means they way he would run the office if elected, then what exactly will he change? Its good to have a vision but there must be paths to get to the goal, there must be ideas that can come to fruition, there must be honesty and disclosure so people around can rally towards a cause. People are rallying towards the cause of change without knowing what the change is or how we will get there. More empty promises with no action? Have we not had enough of that already?

For a person, who claims to be beyond negative politics, all I have seen him do is bash Hillary Clinton. Rather than talk towards what he is about all he has done is talk about what Hillary is not. I have seen him misinterpret Hillary’s words (MLK situation), call her out on her office records (yet his Senate records are mysteriously non-existent), and cry about being “tag-teamed.” The recent snub towards Hillary at the State of Union Address (where he refused to acknowledge her existence) seems a little petty, which further cements the fact that for someone who claims that he is above all the petty politics that plague Washington, he seems to be a person who fits right in.

Note to Obama: Please tell me what you are about and what your vision is instead of screaming “CHANGE” and putting down other contenders. I know Hillary does the same, but I have a better idea of what she stands for. It’s about time you laid out your plans, don’t you think?

Note to Obama supporters: If I have missed his message other than the word “Change,” please feel free to enlighten me .

By Hilary Franklin

In this golden age of visual media, where we all communicate with one another (silently) via instant messaging, e-mail, blogs and vlogs, videophone, paper and pencil, and yes, even TTYs sometimes,

Why, oh WHY does the emphasis still have to be on silence whenever the news media picks up on an issue that relates somehow to deafness?

Take the recent media storm surrounding the new Pepsi ad featuring a well-known deaf joke. Though it will not be shown live until the day of the Super Bowl, the ad can already be viewed online. The media has picked up on this with a great fervor, and to my dismay, the majority of news outlets (both television and newspaper) have chosen headlines that include some form of the word “silent.”

• Pepsi hopes silence is golden with Super Bowl ad - USATODAY.com
• Deaf PepsiCo workers to star in silent Super Bowl ad
• Pepsi’s New Super Bowl Commercial: Silence
• Pepsi ad to give Super Bowl viewers a moment of silence
• PepsiCo Super Bowl commercial breaks the cacophony with 60 seconds of total silence
• PepsiCo Super Bowl ad features silence

But the most ironic one of all?

• Silent Super Bowl ad will resonate with deaf

The juxtaposition of “silent” and “resonate” had me shaking my head.

I know I don’t like clichés, but this just seems so over the top. Of course, what else would they say? How about focusing on the use of ASL rather than the lack of sound?

By the way, I will grant that the lack of audio in this 60-second commercial will definitely have people going “wha…?!” But still.

What do YOU think?

Hilary Franklin is a politically incorrect writer. By day she masquerades as a technical writer in an educational research firm. She has come to the conclusion that everything she learned, she did indeed learn in kindergarten.

Get ready for Super Bowl Sunday at DPHH on Friday, February 1! There’s no better place to get ready for the most-watched U.S. television broadcast of the year than at one of the best sports bars in town. Crystal City Sports Pub is a great place to relax, come grab a seat at the lengthy bar and join great conversations.

Time to dust off your favorite team jersey for DPHH, whether you’re rooting for the Pats, Giants or the good ole burgundy and gold. If football’s not your thing, wear your college colors or don your jersey from your favorite MLB, NBA, Soccer team. Ladies who aren’t into football can come and check out the tight ends.

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Arlington, VA 22202

I went to MacWorld last week! As a Mac user and a newly-minted resident of San Francisco, it was my holy and solemn duty to go. I made especially sure to go the day after Steve Jobs’ keynote so I could see new Apple machines on display. While my hopes for a MacBook Pro update was dashed, I was intrigued by the updated Apple TV and the MacBook Air.

First, obligatory picture of the MacBook Air. You may now ooh and ahh.

Now, I spent far more time with the Apple TV. What a great product…buy or rent movies. Watch Flickr photo feeds. Along with iTunes Movie Rentals, I could unlatch myself from the tyranny of Netflix’s 3-day wait for DVDs and recapture the holy grail that is every American’s birthright: instant gratification.

Alas, we are all deaf people here, and require captioning or subtitling to enjoy movies. Remember how Apple added closed captioning support for iTunes and iPods? I wondered if this applied to the Apple TV as well.

I talked with one of the Apple floor guys, and sure enough, the answer is yes. It’s in the Video menu in the Settings screen.

So far, so good. Now are any of the movies closed captioned? None of the movies available showed the [CC] symbol. So for our first try, we watched Ratatouille (SD) (standard definition, which is like normal TV compared to high-definition, HD).

Sure enough, it’s captioned! And it looks so pretty too–like rectangular black bubbles illuminated by soft blue light.

However, this was dumb luck. The other three movies we tried–Blades of Glory (SD), Live Free and Die Hard (HD), and Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest (HD)–did not display any captions.

For that matter, neither did any of the TV shows (also available on Apple TV) that we tried: Scrubs, CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, or Family Guy.

Clearly, there is some work left to do. Apple did its part by building in closed captioning support, so now the burden appears to be on the content providers–the major Hollywood studios–to ensure their online offerings are closed captioned. But my blog doesn’t stop here.

I went home after MacWorld thinking maybe I’d rent a movie via the iTunes Movie Store. I picked Ratatouille even though it had no [CC] symbol in iTunes because, hey, I knew it was definitely captioned (via my experience with Apple TV at MacWorld) and it’s supposedly the same rental system as used on the Apple TV.

Imagine my surprise when Ratatouille didn’t display any captions (and I made sure to turn it on via Preferences). It turns out Ratatouille’s not captioned if you rent it on your computer. But it is when you rent it through Apple TV. Huh?

So either Apple is serving up different movie files for Apple TV rentals and iTunes Movie rentals separately, or it’s the same movie file, but each system reads closed captioning encoding differently. Neither approach really makes sense. I strongly feel that if one movie displays captions on one system, it should display captions across all Apple systems, especially since they all support closed captioning.

I kept an eye on deafmac.org because I knew they’d talk about this issue sooner or later, and sure enough, Chad Taylor blogged about his experience renting a movie in iTunes.

Chad says with glee that he rented Team America: World Police on iTunes and it displayed captions beautifully. What’s more, he transferred it to his iPhone and captions were also displayed on there, too.

I ran to Team America’s page on iTunes and, sure enough, there is a [CC] symbol there. Awesome. That’s a step in the right direction. But how the heck do I find other movies that are also closed captioned?

One person at deafmac.org figured it out. Johnathan, in comment 13, says:

You can go to iTunes, go to Browse and click Movies then you can pick any under Genre. You will see CC logo under Name and next to ratings

I’ll rephrase here. iTunes gives you two ways of browsing for movies–through its flashy graphical interface, or through the Browse screen. You can go to the Movies page, and then click on “Browse” in the upper-right. An easier way is to just go to the View menu and click on “Show Browser” (Command-B). This is what it looks like:

Notice the [CC] symbol next to Clockstoppers and Dragonslayer. Nice. But there really aren’t that many closed captioned movies available. Out of 1,195 movies available for purchase or rental on iTunes, a paltry 23 are closed captioned (I counted them).

What’s interesting about these 23 movies? They’re all distributed by Paramount Pictures. Kudos to them for taking a step which all the other movie studios haven’t done yet.

Captioning among Apple’s products is not perfect yet. It certainly seems farther along than any of the other movie-on-demand websites such as Netflix’s new Instant Viewing feature, which doesn’t even work on the Mac yet. What’s more, there’s no legal requirement for any of them to do this…yet.

The law which requires closed captioning applies only to television content transmitted by cable or satellite broadcasting. Instant gratification will have to wait. Fortunately, NAD is working on this issue and has supported draft legislation in the U.S. House of Representatives titled “21st Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act.”

Let’s hope this gets passed soon so we don’t have to keep writing blogs like this and instead be able to simply trust that anything we buy or rent–whether it’s at Blockbuster, through Netflix, or downloaded at iTunes, be closed captioned.

You know, like how it used to be before.

I can’t get enough new info about the Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT), my alma mater. I know more about the latest at Gallaudet University than RIT/ National Technical Institute for the Deaf (NTID). With an occasional peep from NTID every now and then, I have longed for dedicated, RIT/NTID-related blogs with almost-daily updates.

Well, now jumping into the blogosphere is none other than T. Alan Hurwitz, Vice President and Dean of the RIT/NTID with a new webpage called Ask Alan!. Apparently Hurwitz will field questions once a week, but has gotten off to a dull start responding to an inquiry about NTID’s food service program. Uhm, how about fun questions like “Will NTID beat Gallaudet this spring during Rockfest?”, “Why did you fill-in the cherished quad!?” or even “Will NTID establish a climate change program so Rochester will experience toasty springs, creating a swarm of new NTID student and job applications?”.

My wife and I have been on campus for probably a half a day since graduating from RIT…really. Just writing this blog brings a flood of memories, from feasting on legendary DiBella subs with college buddies, to wondering which imbecile set off the 3:30 am fire alarm at tower A before midterm exams, to escaping to Niagara Falls at a moment’s notice, to enduring frigid winter treks on the quarter mile only to arrive to a cancelled class, to psychoanalyzing art murals in the tunnels, to exploiting RIT’s T3 connections for all-night Doom and Warcraft marathons.

The nostalgia has prompted plans for a trip back to good ‘ole Rochy in a few weeks. We can’t wait to check out the new Simonedome (I know it is now called the Gordon Field House, the new name is not as cool), drive through the full-loop behind campus (finally!), explore the new CSD Student Development Center, appreciate the brand new Dyer gallery, run around the new soccer/lacrosse fields behind the college of business, check out the construction of the new “college town” (or is it finished already?), sample some coffee at Java Wally’s (my grade point average would have been bumped up a full point from the caffeine boost).

Then there’s the Rochester environs…visiting Jeremiah’s where I took my wife on our first date, shopping at Parkleigh — my wife’s favorite store, and most importantly visiting our friends who couldn’t get enough of Rochester so they made it their permanent home.

RITers, what memories do you cherish and what would you check out if you went back?

I’ve been on the SnapVRS Ojo Videophone waiting list for a long time now, and have been looking forward to getting and playing with it. However while waiting for it, a new piece of deaf hardware porn has arrived from Viable — the Viable Vpad.

These two devices, along with the Sorenson VP-200, VP-100, and D-Links fill out the video relay hardware experience for us deaf folks. All this hardware has gotten me thinking. There are some interesting things about this market and the VRS experience that I believe to be true:

• We have no vendor or provider loyalty. Whoever gives us the best hardware/software combination gets our valuable Federally funded minutes.
• Each new piece of hardware is more complicated to use than the last, but has more features except the ones we really want.
• Video quality has stagnated. Sure, it’s improved slightly over the years, but where is my HD VRS service? I want to see the pores on the interpreter’s face.
• The remotes always suck.
• Interoperability is laughable. Why can’t I call anyone regardless of device, easily? The companies are not going to work together on this unless we demand it.
• Why aren’t VPs the de facto “telephone” at places like Gallaudet, NAD, or other “deaf”-related workplaces?

The last one above deserves more explanation. When I worked at Gallaudet, most people (especially hearing folks) did not have a VP. So how were parents, students, or staff supposed to contact them? That’s right, through the relay. Even though they could sign. I found this outrageous, do you? One small concession that Gallaudet makes is that they supply webcams to hearing folks. But this isn’t the same as a full always-on and accessible VP.

Even at The National Association of the Deaf (yes I spelled it out for emphasis) VPs don’t have a full seat at the table. What I want is to be able to go to NAD’s or Gallaudet’s website, grab a person’s phone number (groan, or IP address) and call them. Hearing or deaf. I want to see them on the screen signing back to me. “Hello!” “How are you?”

But back to the point — where’s my Ojo? Hope it comes before the Vpad comes out. Only to be replaced, yet again, and put in the great VP dustbin under my bed.

Old Man 2007 has walked off the plank, and we have Baby Boy 2008 steering the ship. All hands on deck! In other words, 2007 has come and gone, and this is the first day of 2008, at least in my corner of the hemisphere.

And the first day of the new year brings the inevitable resolutions. I’m no different. I had a list of resolutions, but judging from my track record, the chances of me keeping them in the first three months are very small…try 29.5683%. Like most people at the end of the year, I would beat myself up and curse up a storm for not sticking to my resolve on every item on my list.

With that history in mind, someone suggested to me that perhaps the best resolution I can make for myself is none. Zippo. Nada. “Shouldn’t you strive to improve and better yourself in Vikki years, and not calendar years?” When I considered my feats, accomplishments, and growth using that novel measurement, I had to say, “You’ve come a long way, baby.”

After all, like fine wine and cheese, it takes TIME to improve on oneself. One calendar year won’t always do the job. I will use my resolutions this year to jump-start some things I’ve wanted to do, but when Old Man 2008 rolls around in the wheelchair, I won’t jump off the plank if I didn’t accomplish EVERYTHING on my list.

So with that said, Happy New Year! Onwards and upwards (yes, K.N.B., I’m stealing your line) to living life the best way you can!