Complaint Filed Against Sorenson
Three Video Relay Services [VRS] companies – Purple Communications, SnapVRS and CSDVRS has filed a complaint with the Federal Communicatons Commission [FCC], against Sorenson Communications, Inc.
They are requesting that the FCC order Sorenson to halt their alleged non-compliance with the 10 digit number mandate, and degradation of service quality. In their legal brief to the FCC, they state the following:
Sorenson has knowingly and willfully taken action to degrade its videophone [VP] equipment’s ability to fully connect with the services and equipment of other providers. Sorenson’s actions are plainly anti-competitive and, and among other things, present a serious risk to the ability of providers effectively to connect consumers to emergency services.
They accuse Sorenson of hiding the Caller ID in proprietary and non-standard data, to ensure that only Sorenson will get the Caller ID.
In addition, called parties from the Sorenson VP do not receive caller ID — even when making a VRS call through Sorenson — the lone exception being when there is a point-to-point call between two Sorenson VPs.
What does this mean? It means two things – other VP users and VRS providers will only be able to see the IP address, not the 10 digit number. By allegedly doing this, Sorenson is preventing the deaf consumers of having equivalent access to telephone features that hearing persons are able to use. Furthermore, this also means that when Caller IDs are not shown to other VRS providers (that are not Sorenson), this will cause potentially delayed and even refusal of 911 calls.
If true, this not only violates the FCC’s mandates, but also violates the American Disabilities Act and puts VRS users at risk.
The three VRS companies believe Sorenson is deliberately doing this based on two reasons:
- Sorenson is allegedly hiding the Caller ID in proprietary and non-standard data.
- Sorenson has ignored repeated requests for clarification from other companies on this matter, with the exception of responding once, pointing to a still pending proposal, ‘Relay Provider Interface’.
In the legal brief, the plantiffs state that while it is true that the proposal will resolve this matter, it is still awaiting FCC’s response. The VP consumers cannot afford delays on the Caller ID matter, especially when it comes to being able to make emergency calls.
Not only that, but ironically in response to the plantiffs’ concerns, Sorenson clearly exhibited knowledge of industry standards and protocols, which gives them no excuse for not complying.
This is going to be very interesting to watch as it unfolds. If the allegations are true – which I believe to be – their conduct is absolutely deplorable and not only does Sorenson deserve this complaint, but they also deserve a mass exodus of their consumers.
Note: I contacted Sorenson this morning asking for comments on this. So far I have not gotten any.
UPDATE: Sorenson responded to my email and said they had no comment on this matter.
A Letter To Me
My parents just gave me my childhood documents for me to decide whether I wanted to keep them or not. The majority of the files were educational in nature, but a solid percentage of the files were legal documents. As many of my regular blog readers know, as a child I was involved with a lawsuit against the public schools to provide me with a qualified American Sign Language interpreter. The story, “Mom’s Gone Fighting The Deaf Wars” is chronicled here.
As I went through the files, I found a letter addressed to me from our attorney, Kary Love. I don’t remember reading this letter when I first received it, but as I read it again as an adult sixteen years later, there are no words for me to describe how deeply powerful this letter is. Thank you Kary, for writing this letter.
Dear Jeannette:
It was very nice to see you again at the hearing. I understand from speaking with your mother that you were not too happy about having to testify again. I wanted to write to you to let you know that, no matter how the case turns out, it was important for you to take a stand. The Special Education laws come from a famous Supreme Court case Brown v. Board of Education. This case established the legal principle, based on the Constitution, that all people are entitled to an equal opportunity for a public education. In that case, black people successfully challenged “separate but equal” schools based on race.
In your case, you are standing up for the principle that deaf students are entitled to an equal opportunity for education by being afforded interpreters who can make their time in school meaningful. Since you are bright and can excel in school, you have a special responsibility to assert your rights, not only for your own benefit, but to advance the rights of all disabled kids many of whom cannot stand up for themselves.
By doing this, you become one of many Americans who have sacrificed to make the Constitution a living, meaningful “supreme law of the land.” Those who went before you suffered embarrassment, harassment and even were jailed before the laws protecting equal rights were adopted. You have continued their fight, and made their sacrifices worthwhile, by not letting the laws they fought for be stripped of meaning. I know it was hard, but as I am sure your parents have told you, most things worth achieving are hard. Keep up the good work.
Very truly yours,
Kary Love
—
Copyright ©Jeannette Johnson of The Deaf Edge, 2009. All rights reserved.
Open Letter To ALL Deaf Organizations
Two recent incidents in the media has prompted me to write this open letter to all Deaf organizations. The first incident in the media was the “House Divided” episode on the television show, House MD. In that episode, the show turned into a science fiction instead of being the usual medical drama. A boy was secretly cochlear implanted by Dr. House, then immediately afterwards, the boy could understand everything he was hearing. No speech therapy. No training. No waiting period for the CI to be turned on.
Then the boy rips out the CI. Talk about a poorly researched script!
Now we have this article in Newsweek, which is linked on DeafRead. In this article, the journalist compares the culturally Deaf to those who are mentally ill and being proud about refusing their medication.
In other words, the journalist thinks a Deaf person has to have a cochlear implant to have a good life, to have control over their lives, to be able to participate in society on an equal basis. No mention about American Sign Language or Deaf Culture is mentioned in this article.
I am personally outraged at the irresponsibility by the media. The flawed information and perceptions presented by the media are damaging to the Deaf Community. This only perpetuates further discrimination and misinformation about us, making it harder for us to get equal communication access and respect for our language and culture.
So my question to all of the Deaf organizations out there: Why aren’t you doing something about this?
There’s only so much I can do as a v/blogger. Why aren’t we seeing action on these matters from our organizations that exist to serve us?
Public Relations War on DVTV
The ongoing saga on DeafVideo.TV is a convoluted tale, beginning with AFA’s inception in early March, prompting Barry Sewell to accuse AFA of being an extension of DBC, which has been denied by both organizations.
This led to CherylfromMA and InsaneMisha, two prominent vloggers/commenters and strong supporters of Barry, to gradually over time, question his motives when it came to AFA and DBC. Barry’s comments increasingly turned personal and it was clear to observers that he was deliberately pushing people’s buttons to incite a reaction. CherylfromMA and InsaneMisha’s break from Barry, however, was not apparent until they attended the AFA rally against AG Bell on April 3, 2009, sending shock waves through the vlogosphere.
Afterwards, the lurkers, commenters and vloggers witnessed a vicious, tragic deterioration of Barry’s friendship with the two, particularly with CherylfromMA. One of the most stark examples of this rift is Cheryl’s video comment calling Barry a controller and a destroyer.
Despite this loss of support and friendship, Barry continued his ‘questioning’ of AFA and thier supporters, ultimately leading to more of the Signing Circle supporters to withdraw from him. Not surprisingly, AFA celebrated the defection of CherylfromMA, InsaneMisha and the others, which only led to Barry being further incited against the organization.
At this point, it seemed that AFA was winning the public relations battle on DVTV, due to Barry’s rapid loss of supporters and mass defections to AFA. Things took a twist however, when Cobi, Barry’s son created a vlog mocking AFA by using the Aflac duck commercials. That vlog can be found here.
At first, people thought it was Barry who created the vlog, but when it was revealed that it was actually his son, people were outraged. They could not believe that a fourteen year old would do this, solely on his own, as Cobi and Barry claimed. Many also viewed this as a perfect example of how prejudice comes into existence.
People at first engaged Cobi in a dialogue, particularly Ella Mae Lentz. However, this turned heated, when some of the commenters began telling Cobi that his father needed to grow up, that they found his family disgusting and so on, for allowing him to do this. One commenter even stated to Cobi that controlling parents can lead bright and mature children to kill them.
This led to some other commenters to call for a halt to this, since they felt this was bullying Cobi. The comments targeting Cobi slowly reduced after that, and Barry and Cobi remained steadfast, refusing to apologize or take down the vlog. This in turn, led to Aidan Mack creating a vlog discussing brainwashing, and in that vlog, she accused Barry of brainwashing his female followers. That vlog was then removed by Tayler, and Aidan uploaded the same vlog, only with the accusation against Barry edited out.
Aidan went on to accuse Tayler of censorship, prompting him to make this vlog, pointing out that only .09% of the vlogs, have been removed. Less than a half percent.
As things stand right now, the dispute between Barry and AFA continues with both sides pressuring Tayler to keep Aidan’s brainwashing vlog up, or to remove it. Tayler made another vlog here, discussing the pressuring emails.
Not only that, but Barry’s relentless questioning of AFA and DBC has led to public acknowledgment by Ella Mae Lentz and others that they do consider cochlear implants to be audistic. There’s a private sentiment amongst observers that this has turned into a televised Roman amphitheater, and I share that sentiment. However, I would not be surprised if someday, years from now, historians or anthropologists pieced together this saga into a documentary. On the surface, it might seem merely like a sordid public display of friendships being torn apart and personal vendettas and grievances…
But upon closer examination, one does realize that the current saga provides an unique insight into Deaf culture, deaf identity politics, audism and most of all, into the human psyche.
The Power of Twitter
The online store, Amazon.com is now embroiled in an intense controversy due to its labeling GLBT books as adult, effectively censoring these books. This tactic apparently began back in Feburary, and it wasn’t until this weekend, when Twitter bloggers took up the cause with the tag of #amazonfail, that Amazon.com declared it was a glitch and they’re supposedly investigating it now.
This kind of cyber-activism is right up the alley of the Deaf Community. We are well-versed in cyber-activism, as DeafRead’s official blog post stated. Imagine if we started to do more than just letting DeafRead link to us, but also started to link to each other’s blog posts, which would lead to our blog ranks increasing in many search engines, making us even easier to find.
Then we twittered about it with the right tags.
Don’t get me wrong – I’m not saying that DeafRead doesn’t do enough for the Deaf Community. However, if we truly want to effect social change as so many of us claim, we have to reach out beyond the borders of our community, to the masses.
Just like the GLBT community and their allies did on Twitter to take on Amazon.com and their shameful censoring of GLBT books. So what are we waiting for? *tweets*
Twisted Irony
For those who follow the news, it’s impossible to escape any news story about Rod Blagojevich, the Governor of Illinois who was impeached yesterday by the Illinois House. The more the news expose him, the more unbelievable how corrupt this guy is.
On September 12, 2007 Governor Blagojevich signed Illinois Senate Bill 259, which established statewide licensing standards for registered interpreters for the deaf.
Then it was publicized on CNN and on some media outlets this week that Blagojevich hired a woman to interpret for the deaf, when her only experience was a one-week class in sign language when she was in grade school.
Talk about twisted irony…!
Document, Document, Document
As the Deaf Community continues to struggle for equal communication access, we’ve embraced the power of the Internet and have used it to our advantage. This is a terrific thing, but to ensure we win battles in our struggle, we need to document incidents in formal written documents. Many of us, understandably, feel awkward with writing formal letters documenting what took place. For this reason, I am going to share the letter I just sent to the Duncan Wyeth, the director of Michigan Commission on Disability Concerns regarding the DODHH Advisory Council meeting on May 2, 2008.
One thing I need to mention before I put in my letter here – we have great news, which I did not discuss in my letter. Duncan Wyeth announced that the state will begin searching for a replacement to fill the executive director position at DODHH! So all of the hard work by the Deaf Community paid off! As soon it is official and a job posting is available, I will blog it. And if anyone’s interested right now, before it’s official, let me know and I will point you to the right person to talk and keep in contact with.
Regarding this letter I wrote, some people may be wondering why this is important to do. The reason why people need to write letters is because if a person has a problem and the person doesn’t put it in writing, the problem does not exist. Letters like this can be used as evidence in court and so on, whereas it is very difficult to get verbal communication admitted. So it is very important when someone has a problem and gets blown off, like I did at the Advisory Council meeting, to document it. And now, here’s the letter. I hope this will give people an idea how to proceed with situations like this.
******
Dear Mr. Wyeth:
I am writing to express my dissatisfaction with the response I received to my public comment regarding the Quality Assurance program at the Division of Deafness and Hard of Hearing’s [DODHH] Advisory Council meeting on May 2, 2008. As I stated at the meeting, I am Deaf and a student at Grand Valley State University, majoring in Public and Nonprofit Administration. This past winter semester, I was assigned an interpreter for the deaf who holds a QA II. However, I observed the interpreter making numerous errors that a QA II interpreter should not be making. As a member of the Deaf Community here in Michigan, I expect that interpreters rated at QA II will not commit semantic errors such as interpreting the phrase “roll call” so as to render it nonsensical, signing “role summon.” If an interpreter makes such basic errors like this, then she is obviously unable to faithfully interpret at any level. If this basic error had been interpreted to a Deaf persons whose English is weak, in all likelihood they would not have been able to understand what was truly being said.
This by itself would not greatly concern me. However, I have been noticing that this is not an isolated incident and in fact, I am seeing interpreters new to the field holding QA ratings that are not congruent with their skills. These multiple incidents have led me to question the integrity of the QA testing process. I am not alone in questioning the integrity of the QA system as evidenced by other Deaf individuals’ remarks at the meeting. The majority of those who made comments expressed identical concerns and requested an explanation to account for the changes we are recently seeing. One woman in particular, Sheila (last name unknown to me) stated that she was noticing inexperienced interpreters receiving QA IIIs, and experienced interpreters failing or receiving QA Is. She was visibly upset about this, and asked a very legitimate question, “Why is this happening? It should be the other way around.”
DODHH’s response was dismissive to all of us who expressed our concerns about this matter, and this has prompted me to write this letter. I am disturbed in particular by the state interpreter coordinator’s response to our very serious concerns. The only response made was that the QA testing process had not changed, but remains the same as it has always been. There was no acknowledgment that our concerns have any basis, nor were we given any assurances that our concerns would be investigated and appropriate corrections made. Perhaps most disturbing of all was the attitude from DODHH that indicated a clear lack of genuine interest in what to us, the people whom it is DODHH’s mission to serve, is a very serious matter. DODHH’s response is not sufficient, and does not account for the widespread dissatisfaction and concerns about the recent spate of inadequate interpreters now holding credentials unwarranted by their skill levels.
This only reinforces my suspicion that something has changed within the QA testing process, and gives me the impression that DODHH, for some unknown reason, does not want to investigate and correct. This greatly perplexes and disturbs me. Prior to Chris Hunter’s retirement, DODHH had an outstanding reputation of advocacy and ensuring that only properly skilled interpreters received Michigan Quality Assurance ratings. It is disheartening to see that this seems no longer to be the case.
I would like to see the DODHH investigate this matter and provide its constituents with the reason of the cause for this now unreliable credentialing process, with a firm commitment to correct it immediately.
Thank you for your time and attention to this matter. I look forward to a response soon.
Sincerely,
Jeannette K. Johnson
cc: Andrew Levin
We Want To Be Controlled
It’s time for another The Deaf Edge rant. Now, this isn’t meant to sting or insult people. This is merely my feelings based on what I am observing. I already posted a very similar version of this on Tayler’s DeafRead official blog, but since that thread is winding down, I thought I would re-post and elaborate more on my own blog.
I do not understand why people are still upset over DeafRead’s upcoming changes. Tayler and DeafRead are going to release a version of DeafRead where you can customize the list of v/blogs that you can read/view. In essence, they are empowering us to be more selective in what we want to read and/or view.
Yet we have people saying, “No. This solution isn’t any good. I want the CI v/blogs gone, period. I don’t like them, therefore it shouldn’t exist for anyone and I want DeafRead to do all of the work for me.”
It seems to me that people want to be controlled, instead of being empowered to make decisions for themselves. They want to be told which blogs are good or bad, and what’s Deaf-centric and what’s not and so on. Why else would they want DeafRead to do all of the censoring instead of doing it themselves?
But then, I can kind of understand that. It’s a lot easier to live your life, if someone else’s making the decisions for you. And sadly enough, historically the Deaf Community has had others making the decisions for us. Our parents made all of the decisions for us. Our doctors. Our educators. Everyone, except for ourselves.
And so the self-repression and lack of self-empowerment marches on…
Note – I used repression as defined by www.m-w.com: a mental process by which distressing thoughts, memories, or impulses that may give rise to anxiety are excluded from consciousness and left to operate in the unconscious
Call to Arms – Lying To Ourselves?
Deaf Education. That word carries so much meaning and controversy. A ideological war has been waged over Deaf Education for the past two hundred years. Now, I am seeing people call for arms for deaf children and babies to be given the right to access American Sign Language so that they may receive the opportunity to a good education.
By no means am I opposed to that. I am heartened to see the increasing exchange of knowledge and a growing maturity on our part. We are starting to come into our own and ensure our right to American Sign Language.
What puzzles me however, is that despite the call to arms for American Sign Language in Deaf Education, there is an eerie silence regarding North Carolina School of the Deaf. Initially there wasn’t enough information for me to throw in my support one way or another. But now, I feel that there is enough information for myself and others in the Deaf Community to support the students, parents and staff of NCSD.
Yet, I see no wide outcry of support for NCSD. I see no organizations of and for the Deaf coming in to help the students, staff and parents of NCSD. This leaves me with some difficult questions in my mind. Why is there such a loud silence? Is it because people know picketing at NCSD won’t work and they rather just picket, and nothing more?
A call to arms to me, means doing everything possible under the sun. Documenting what happens, damned the ire of others. Being not anonymous. Dealing with personal confrontations professionally and documenting it afterwards. Organizing with like-minded individuals who share your concerns and pooling together the documents. Speaking with the government about what’s going on and showing them the evidence. Helping others learn those tools. Giving support to others who need it.
It’s not glamorous. It’s not easy. It’s not something that will land you on the front page of the newspapers immediately. It’s not gonna get you on national news because there’s almost no opportunity for you to make yourself a martyr.
But the fight at NCSD and similar places goes at the core of what matters in Deaf Education. That is where the trenches are at. That is where the battles are won, and ultimately, the war. Where are we? Why are the trenches empty?
Petitions
Some students at NTID have set up a petition for the removal of a plaque honoring AG Bell, and it has over 160 signatures at the time of this writing. I think it’s cool that people are pulling together for something that they care about, and I hope the petition is successful. AG Bell does not deserve to be honored.
However, what strikes me the most are people’s apparent priorities. When I started the Bahl petition, a petition to object against police brutality against the Deaf, the Bahl petition barely squeaked past a hundred signatures.
Judging by the amount of signatures on the two petitions, police brutality is not as important for the Deaf Community as removing a plaque from a dorm and renaming said dorm.
I can’t help but wince at that.
