Learn how you can assist your speech-disabled clients to receive free phones that accommodate their needs and how to use operator-assisted relay services that allow them to have conversations over the phone even if most other people have difficulties understanding their speech.
VIDEO [CC] - Deaf News: The entrepreneurs no longer feel pigeonholed to work in fields that only cater to other Deaf people in the United States.
NEW YORK (AP) - Thanks to new technology and improving outreach programs, more Deaf people are opening small businesses across the country. Soon after customers arrive at Mozzeria for the first time, they notice something's different about the restaurant: Virtually every staffer is Deaf.
Owners Russ and Melody Stein are also Deaf, and have run their San Francisco restaurant since 2011. The business is thriving because customers love the food and the Steins have overcome obstacles Deaf people can face when they become small business owners - particularly lingering stereotypes and prejudice, and fewer resources than hearing entrepreneurs have.
"We have the same skills as a hearing individual," Russ Stein says. Running Mozzeria comes naturally to Melody Stein, whose family is in the restaurant business. "It's something I've always wanted to do," she says.
Deaf people have the same ambition and ability to be entrepreneurs and business owners as those who hear, says Tom Baldridge, director of the business administration program at Gallaudet University, the largest educational institution serving the Deaf and Hard of Hearing. There's a growing interest among Gallaudet students in entrepreneurship, matching the increase in business schools across the country. The university is expanding its entrepreneurship offerings beyond courses, and giving students experience in running businesses like campus coffee shops.
"A lot is happening right now beyond a few courses in entrepreneurship. We've hired a consultant who's going to guide us (and) infuse corporate entrepreneurship into all the academic disciplines," Baldridge says.
MIXED REACTIONS
The hearing world is still catching up to the idea of Deaf business owners. The Steins have encountered discrimination from people who hear and don't want to make accommodations to help those who are Deaf or Hard of Hearing.
The couple has run into resistance when they asked for help at local government offices, including times when they were trying to get permits required for running a restaurant.
"We have had our rough moments," Russ Stein says. "There have been times when I had to ask for interpreters, and I was made fun of; I was looked down upon."
Vendors and other business owners who can hear are often startled or feel awkward when they first meet the couple. Some have assumed that because the Steins are Deaf, they didn't know what they were doing, Russ Stein says. Some have been impatient about using pen and paper to communicate, or have said offensive or inappropriate things.
"People ask, 'how do you drive?'" Stein says.
But most vendors adapt to working with the Steins. Mozzeria's wine vendor has become a true colleague, helping them learn more about the restaurant business.
And customers, most of whom can hear, seem happy to write their questions about items on the menu. Some seem awkward when they first come in, but they soon relax and enjoy their meals.
"They learn to overcome their fear," Melody Stein says.
OVERCOMING STEREOTYPES
Many Deaf owners have dealt with prejudice, including hearing people believing that the best careers for Deaf people are teaching or counseling other Deaf people.
Mara Ladines, who owns By Mara, a clothing manufacturer and store in New York wanted a career in fashion design, but some counselors in college tried to steer her toward being a graphic designer, a job that would require less communication with others.
"They believed a Deaf individual can't get a job in the fashion industry." she says.
Ladines insisted on taking design courses and got jobs in retailers including clothing store H&M. In 2008, she began designing T-shirts and other clothes with a logo that shows the American Sign Language sign for "I love you." She started the business online and it has grown to the point where she could open the store last spring; many of the people who walk in are hearing, and Ladines is able to communicate with them and make sales. By Joyce M. Rosenberg, Associated Press Business Writer
Mr. McGann shares his life experiences, his work to improve the lives of Deaf and Blind people, new technologies available for the Deaf and Blind, and his thoughts about the positive impacts of Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA).
Mr. Richard McGann, who is Deaf-Blind, He shared his story with the students and demonstrated some of the accommodations and technology that help him every day. The students were captivated! We are #wpsdproud.
VIDEO [CC] - Deaf News: Petitioning Closed Caption Accessibility Act Bill to Canada and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
TORONTO - Can you hear me? I cannot hear you. I am Deaf. Hearing is the only thing we can’t do… We can do anything else - and not hearing doesn't make us any less Canadian that everyone else! We love our beautiful country as much as you do. We love the quality of life here that is afforded to every Canadians, both citizens and newcomers.
Unfortunately, life for Deaf people in Canada is without many of the things you take for granted. We face much hardship, discrimination, inequality in employment, and poverty. We are not even able to enjoy our internet or technologies or facilities or events or anything you see and use in daily life. Sign up petition HERE.
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Canada has not enacted a law similar to the US “21st Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act” which would provide an entitlement for Deaf citizens to access media online with mandated closed captioning. Without captioning, online content remains mostly inaccessible for us. In Canada, we are left out, falling behind the times in terms of modern accessibility; Technology changed and the rules didn’t. We have no clue what politician may say on videos or ads online. We are unable to watch any video online even ESPN, HBO, Netflix, MTV or our national new sites (CTV.ca or CBC.ca) because they choose not to provide closed captioning for some or all of its contents and are not required to do so.
Even more importantly, on the employment side, with all of the technological advancements available, communication barriers have been broken down. Today’s technology has revolutionized the workplace in terms of communications. With such a wealth of technology, incorporating the Deaf into a workplace environment should be fairly easy to do. You'd be thinking that it should have solved some of the unemployment issues, so did we!
In federal election 2015 that Justin Trudeau of the Liberal Party won the majority, we the Deaf note that none of the parties have addressed the issues of accessibility; none have developed any remedies for the issues facing the Deaf communities across this great country with exception of promising Accessibility Act but falling short of mentioning anything on our issues.
VIDEO [CC] - Exclusive: We all may be dead in 30 years, scientists are beginning to worry about AI and the danger it poses mankind: US report.
US News - The human race could vanish in the blink of an eye within our lifetimes. Or we could just as plausibly see our species become immortal by the middle of the 21 st century. That's the promise, and the threat, posed by the accelerating pace of research around Artificial Intelligence. It may be an either/or proposition.
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Most people have heard about Ray Kurzweil's immensely hopeful view, captured in his books and lectures about "singularity." In that view, AI progresses in helpful leaps, benefitting humankind at nearly every step of the way.
A good example of the early benefits of AI that nearly everyone uses now is Google Maps. The next stage of AI will be a supercomputer that recreates human intelligence. And the final evolution is artificial super-intelligence (ASI) that learns so quickly that it literally "soars" past ordinary human intelligence and solves every problem confronting mankind.
Billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk fears that we are "summoning the demon" in our race to create an artificial super-intelligence.
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What all of them agree on is that we may very well approach a "tripwire" sometime in the next 30 years, where a powerful supercomputer finally replicates the human brain and mind, and crosses over nearly instantly into super-intelligence.
And then what happens next is anyone's guess.
"While most scientists I've come across acknowledge that ASI would have the ability to send humans to extinction, many also believe that used beneficially, ASI's abilities could be used to bring individual humans, and the species as a whole, to…species immortality," writes Tim Urban, the author of the popular "Wait, But Why?" blog.
Right now, drones use AI to navigate very complicated landscapes in order to deliver bombs in battlefield conditions. But they're still piloted remotely by human beings.
Should a stealth bomber be developed that can fly itself (not dissimilar to Google's self-driving cars that likewise use AI), and then make decisions about where to drop bombs in battlefield conditions without human input, it could create a situation where AI is in control (and not humans).
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Kurzweil believes we will hit this tripwire by 2045. Most of his scientific colleagues believe it is inevitable that we will hit it at some point in the 21 st century. Many of them are fearful of what happens when we cross it.
But why are they all so afraid of ASI? It's a good question - one that hasn't truly been explored all that much beyond a few boardrooms.
Much of what the public knows about the potential risks posed from AI applications comes from either science fiction movies such as "The Terminator," or from fears surrounding autonomous weapons with AI capabilities to target without human control. These are very real fears.
The truth is that AI is poised to do significant, irreparable harm right now, not just at some point in the future through the creation of a non-human super-intelligence, scientists have warned. AI combined with autonomous weapons could launch an era of indiscriminate killing the likes of which civilization has never seen before.
There have been two revolutions in warfare. With each revolution, humankind made a quantum leap in the ability to kill exponentially more people on the battlefield from a distance. We are on the cusp of the third revolution, engineered by AI. This one, though, may erase its inventor.
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For centuries, if you wanted to kill someone, you had to do it at close range. Gunpowder gave us the ability to fire projectiles at enemies from a distance, and changed the concept of war for good. Soldiers could kill their enemy without seeing the result at close range.
Nuclear weapons created the second revolution in warfare. While few nuclear weapons have been put to use, their invention taught us that we could create very large weapons, launch them from an even greater distance, and kill many people on the battlefield all at once. War hasn't been the same since then.
But it is the third revolution in warfare - autonomous weapons that can largely think for themselves and target enemies on the battlefield without human intervention - that we should all be worried about. Once such weapons are created, there may be no turning back.
"Autonomous weapons are ideal for tasks such as assassinations, destabilizing nations, subduing populations and selectively killing a particular ethnic group," Musk, Hawking and others wrote in an open letter in July 2015. "Starting a military AI arms race is a bad idea, and should be prevented by a ban on offensive autonomous weapons beyond meaningful human control."
World leaders, to date, have ignored the scientists on the threats AI poses to our very existence, much as they've either ignored them (or moved slowly) on other existential future threats like climate change or nuclear proliferation.
But AI is different. Once a super-intelligent, big-data-crunching AI machine learns how to think and learn for itself, it may decide that carbon life forms are the obvious target in any threat scenario. At that point, it won't care what world leaders think.
So whether it's now, or later this century, it's time we took AI seriously (or at least understand Isaac Asimov's first law of robotics). Our lives most likely depend on it. If we are not careful, we are all going to be dead in 30 years because of artificial intelligence. Source: Copyright 2015 U.S. News & World Report
