The purpose and goal of this program was to introduce, share and enlighten CODAs of Color to the field of professional sign language interpreting.  The sessions covered skills required in a variety of interpreting environments, the Code of Professional Conduct and its application in various settings, panel discussions with certified/qualified interpreters who shared their background and experiences, and a session in which members of the SignTalk staff discussed opportunities available to professional interpreters.

As a professional interpreter and CODA of Color herself, Celeste has been a long-time advocate and supporter of the Deaf Community in NYC — particularly the Black-Deaf community. SignTalk is extremely pleased to have partnered with Celeste and provide a grant in support of this six-week workshop series. The feedback from the students has been overwhelmingly positive and we wish them success in the future.

To see the 2-minute news clip featured on Time Warner/NY1 — CODAs of Color, go to https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eQLw_NU8Ml0&feature=youtu.be.

The post SignTalk Foundation is Pleased to Sponsor ‘CODAs of Color,’ an Innovative Workshop Series appeared first on Signtalk Foundation.

Rebecca King, a Deaf Starbucks patron, pulled up to her local St. Augustine, Florida Starbucks’ drive-thru window expecting the usual struggles communicating through a kiosk. She was shocked–and ecstatic–when a signing employee appeared on an Evolution Screen.

This is the first known Starbucks to install an Evolution Screen, in which an interpreter communicates with the driver on the screen if they haven’t responded within a certain amount of time.

Be one of the 6 million plus people to view Ms. King easily ordering her Frappuccino in sign language.

The St. Augustine Starbucks employs a handful of signers as the town hosts a large Deaf and signing community, as well as the Florida School for the Deaf and Blind.  ASL is offered at many of the local high schools and colleges.

Not all Starbucks are as accommodating as St. Augustine’s. In 2013, two New York City Starbucks made Deaf News Today and The New York Times by refusing to serve Deaf customers, making fun of the Deaf accent, and even calling the police to remove Deaf patrons. The Deaf patrons sued Starbucks. Starbucks responded quickly in print and video reiterating that all customers, including Deaf customers, should feel welcome and enjoy the Starbucks Experience.

Indeed, what happened in New York City seems to be an anomaly. Starbucks has a history of hiring Deaf employees in many of their stores, from South Korea to Santa Monica, CA. Starbucks is an active participant in RIT’s Coop Program, which offers internships to Deaf college students and hires many of them. According to this video, there are 5 Deaf employees at the Starbucks headquarters in Seattle, WA and Starbucks actively meets all of their communication needs.

Of course, an Evolution Screen isn’t practical for all fast food restaurants, nor do all restaurants have easy access to signing employees. To help facilitate communication, Starbucks also stocks picture cards so any customer can point to the drink of their choice and size without a struggle.

We hope other restaurants and coffee shops will follow suit and install drive-thru touch screens, making it easier for everyone to place accurate orders.

Great job, Starbucks. I raise my red cup to you.

The post Starbucks and the Evolution Screen appeared first on Signtalk Foundation.

Book cover of “Where I Stand” by John Lee Clark

John Lee Clark opens his brilliant essay collection Where I Stand with a burst of poetry: “As a DeafBlind person, standing for me is almost never about being still or in one place.” He describes waiting for a bus, marking time with his feet in order to observe his surroundings. Communication intensifies this habit, he writes, especially when that dialogue is between DeafBlind people: “I would always find myself emerging from an engrossing conversation standing in a different place.” Interpreters who read Clark’s collection may finish the book with a similar reaction. On any given workday, a freelancer can encounter a hearing consumer with no knowledge of ASL, followed by another who views deafness as a medical malady, then by and a third with deep knowledge of the culture, all before lunchtime. Clark’s essays show an equally impressive span, offering insight in equal measure to community insiders, newcomers and novices, and complete outsiders. As skilled an essayist as he is a poet, he deftly adjusts each argument–”Does Disability Really Need to be Fixed?”, “A Cochlear Implant Thought Experiment,” “Why Hearing Parents Don’t Sign”–to match its audience and, importantly, to challenge the assumptions that audience might hold. His work isn’t “for hearing people only,” either. Clark writes one of the clearest explorations of why people “quit” the Deaf community I have ever encountered in “Great Expectations,” an essay that grows to pose a universal question of what any community can and cannot do for its members.

John Lee Clark

Like any great collection of ideas, these live beyond the printed page. One essay, “An Open Letter to American Heritage Dictionary”, led to an actual revision of the newly-added term “audism.” Another excellent piece, “ASL and the Star-Spangled Banner”, has also resonated with Deaf audiences. The remarkable re-thinking of the national anthem as a more accurate and contextualized visual narrative led to this amazing re-rendition by the Rocky Mountain Deaf School. The translator team of fourth and fifth graders also produced an impressive self-analysis. Here, and throughout Where I Stand, Clark brings attention to language as both a means to social justice for his community and as an aesthetic end worthy on its own. He is, after all, a poet. The insights into community life should make the collection required reading for anyone involved in the Deaf-World. But interpreters, after all, are language people, and Clark’s thoughts on poetry in English and in ASL will invigorate anyone who cares about language. He devotes a whole essay to Paul Hostovsky, a talented poet who works as an interpreter. In an essay that appeared in the prestigious magazine POETRY, Clark reviews two centuries of poetry by American Deaf people. (He edited the groundbreaking anthology Deaf American Poetry as well as, in the interest of disclosure, the anthology Deaf Lit Extravaganza, to which I contributed fiction.) Clark compares the brilliance of performed ASL poetry to the dearth of recorded ASL literature, and pithily diagnoses the latter with a “movie problem.” The lack of ASL literature, he argues, stems from the medium itself, and the ingrown problem that performed video differs fundamentally from written text. A written text, he writes, “creates space for us to say things as ourselves. And it creates space, when we are reading it, to fall into that text. In that space, we are there. And that’s how ASL literature will finally get there, too.” Theorizing about the medium of a message could quickly become overly abstract. To Clark, though, medium is a message. One crucial meta-message reflects his experience of (in)accessible media. On one extreme, he writes comically about his thwarted attempts to abandon heavy Braille issues of magazines in “All the Things I Can’t Leave Behind.” Conversely, the lack of these heavy tomes leads him to pose “A Question That’s Harder Than It Should Be”: Should Clark-the-poet send his work to magazines that Clark-the-reader cannot, well, read? The aforementioned POETRY magazine, Clark says, is the only poetry journal to offer hard-copy issues in Braille. (Anyone, then, can read his poem “My Understanding One Day of Fox Gloves.”) Where I Stand closes with essays on the author’s particular DeafBlind experiences, and these are the most moving, the most personal. While Pro-Tactile and Skyways and changing attitudes make this “an exciting time to be DeafBlind”, our age is not perfect. “I Didn’t Marry Annie Sullivan” debunks the assumptions Clark confronts regarding his personal life, and “Unreasonable Effort” rails against the institutional challenges faced by DeafBlind college students. Throughout the collection, Clark slaloms gracefully through his arguments’ logic. He extols writers with disabilities to write about people with disabilities. He parodies ‘people first’ language where a DeafBlind character struggled to run an errand at a social service agency where the new red tape is the zealous application by staff of politically correct terminology. Clark describes his school for the Deaf in exquisite detail in a piece that first appeared in Deaf Lit Extravaganza. This piece shows the subtlety that is Clark the essayist at his best. Clark’s vision has changed over time, and those changes permeate the piece powerfully. Deaf schools, of course, have unrivaled importance in the formative experiences of many Deaf people. For Clark, the beauty of the Minnesota State Academy for the Deaf “encouraged [him] to use a cane and retire [his] eyes to a life of leisure.” This particular place, remembered by this particular author, exists in memory only. This is true for any alumna, but the nostalgia takes on a potent edge, because this is a place the remember-er can no longer see. But the embedded power is this: the speaker forgoes eyesight, overrules its necessity, using language and memory to share with everyone his vision. To learn more about John Lee Clark go to:  www.johnleeclark.com For more information on the blogger visit: www.tkdalton.com/

T. K. Dalton

The post “IN THAT SPACE, WE ARE THERE”: John Lee Clark’s Where I Stand: On the Signing Community and My DeafBlind Experience. appeared first on Signtalk Foundation.

In August 2014 I had the great privilege to experience five wonderful, work-filled days at the first International Deaf-Blind Expo in Las Vegas, Nevada. Thanks to the generosity of the SignTalk Foundation, I was granted a scholarship to attend as a volunteer interpreter and Support Service Provider. Here I was able to work along with 25 other interpreters from around the country and across the world to interpret various workshops, such as “Know your rights under the ADA”, “The Basics of Pro-Tactile”, “Advanced Pro-Tactile”, “Meet the Federal Communications Commission”, and more. Over 175 DeafBlind attendees were present, many with at least one or sometimes two Support Service Providers (SSPs).  We all convened in a huge conference room the size of half a football field for the workshops. It was an awesome feeling to stand near the front of this room and look out at a sea of moving hands – hands that were learning, laughing, and socializing – a truly rewarding opportunity.

The logistics of the communication set-up were impressive to observe.  In addition to the often multiple platform interpreters, there were different “stations” throughout the room that provided close vision and tactile interpreting. There was also live CART interpreting as well as voice-over support for individuals relying on their hearing for communication. Regardless of hearing and vision status – everyone had access to communication!  I had the good fortune of working with an interpreter from California and a top-notch CDI from Washington state. Although somewhat jetlagged from my flight, it was energizing to witness so many people, including the organizers and SSPs, working so diligently to make communication for such a diverse group seem so seamless.

Attendees were from all over the United States and Europe. At the Saturday evening banquet I was delighted to sit with a DeafBlind man from Washington, DC, along with his two Deaf friends who acted as his SSPs. Earlier that day I was asked to relieve his SSP/interpreter. Having limited experience with tactile interpreting, he was extremely patient and willing to guide me as we went along.

The Interpreter/SSP Coordinators were constantly checking in on our well-being. Every 20 minutes there was an organized, simultaneous break to switch interpreters, insuring that we received the necessary rest periods.  Unlimited snacks and water were provided for the SSPs and Interpreters, courtesy of the Bapin Group, the sponsor of the event. In preparation for the event the Coordinators asked each interpreter which situations we were most comfortable working in, such as platform interpreting, tactile interpreting, tracking, small group one-to-one, secondary SSP/workshop interpreter, exhibit hall interpreting, etc.  The Coordinators did their best to place us accordingly and their attention to our needs as interpreters was appreciated by all.

The first International Deaf-Blind Expo offered a rich cornucopia of education and communication experiences for interpreters and DeafBlind participants, as well as a venue that fostered enjoyable networking. Additionally, the event offered a fascinating exposure to the many communication and assistive technologies at the vendor exhibits. The interpreters & SSPs and the DeafBlind community are eagerly anticipating the next International DeafBlind Expo which is scheduled for 2016. If you want to learn more about the event or upcoming events please visit www.bapingroup.com and like Bapin Group LLC on Facebook! To learn more about the DeafBlind community and communication modalities visit www.aadb.org, www.hknc.org and www.deafblindtip.com.

The post International Deaf-Blind Expo – Scholarship Recipient Response appeared first on Signtalk Foundation.

July 25-29, 2014 TERPExpo – Orlando, FL

SignTalk representative, Maria Jimenez, attended the TERPExpo in Orlando as an official sponsor of the event. Maria shared information about professional development opportunities for SignTalk affiliated interpreters and got to observe, first hand, talented interpreter educators in the field. Stay posted for SignTalk’s professional development calendar for in-person and virtual classes!

The post SignTalk Foundation Supports TERPExpo in Orlando! appeared first on Signtalk Foundation.

SignTalk Foundation is pleased to announce their sponsorship of the upcoming International Deaf-Blind Expo that’s taking place in Las Vegas, NV from July 30 – August 3, 2014. This expo is the first time that experts in the field of deaf-blindness are coming together to display state-of-the-art technological devices for people with combined hearing and vision loss. Leaders from the Deaf-Blind community will also be present sharing current trends in the field.

A $500 scholarship was awarded to Barbara Russ Smith of Chestnut Ridge, NY. An affiliate of SignTalk’s, Barbara is a nationally certified interpreter and is very motivated to continue her work in the Deaf-Blind community. She most recently participated in an intensive interpreter education seminar through Helen Keller National Center on deaf-blind interpreting strategies, facilitated by Susanne Morgan Morrow.

Congratulations, Barbara and good luck with the expo!

The post International Deaf-Blind Expo – Scholarship appeared first on Signtalk Foundation.