by Kathryn Hill on January 23, 2011
A recent conversation with an acquaintance from an internet community I frequent prompted me to write this post. He’s not deaf, but he works from home in a basement with headphones on, and often misses the doorbell being rung. He asked the community if it was possible to somehow have his doorbell alert him via Growl on OSX, and I thought this was a really great idea, so I’m throwing it out here. I did a lot of Googling, but didn’t come up with a solution. With the level of technical, hacker, and Burning Man expertise that can be drawn upon here, I am sure someone reading this can put something together.
Alert systems for the deaf are often expensive and bulky. Generally, the basic concept is that one has several central transmitters in various rooms of the house that are hooked up to a lamp. Extra transmitters hooked up to the doorbell, smoke alarm, motion detector, baby monitor, and intruder alarm send wireless signals to the central transmitters, and they will cause the lamps they are hooked into to flash, and in some cases, a bed to vibrate. In some cases, doorbell and smoke alarm systems have to be hard-wired and installed by a professional electrician. There are pager-sized accessories that one can attach to their belt that will send vibrations when a signal is received, but to me, that’s the equivalent of buying a kitchen unitasker like an avocado slicer. Why have extra gadgets? Why not hack the gadgets we currently have?
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by Kathryn Hill on February 12, 2008
Jaman is an online movie site that specializes in indie, art house, and foreign films. Full-length feature movies can be downloaded to watch on your computer or television (no iPod or iPhone capability, yet) and cost $1.99 to rent and $4.99 to purchase. There are over 1,000 titles to choose from, and being that a lot of these selections are foreign, there are films available that come with English subtitles.
I am hoping that Jaman will show other movie download companies that subtitles/captions on downloads do work. Dear iTunes and Netflix: hint, hint.
by Kathryn Hill on February 10, 2008
Ed. note: I updated this post at 14:35 PST on Monday, Feb 11, 2008 to add more information of each candidate’s voting record on accessibility & deaf tech issues, and upgraded McCain’s grade from “F” to “D-” based on his voting record.
This post over on Daily Kos by “slinkerwink” describes how Barack Obama is the only candidate with consistently captioned videos. That got me thinking, and I did some research: a report card grading each presidential candidate on their accessibility to the deaf.
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by Kathryn Hill on February 10, 2008
by Kathryn Hill on February 8, 2008
Text 4 Deaf is a web-to-text message service that allows users to send a text message from the web site to a cell phone belonging to an individual or a group. The recipients can return the messages via their cell phones, and the messages will be delivered to the sender via Web.
Text4Deaf is a web-based service that allows two-way web texting – from the web to the phone and back. With other services, recipients can only reply to the sender’s phone or email address – not ideal for real-time planning or collaboration. It also offers unique features like Group Messaging, Scheduled Messaging, Reminders and SMS Forwarding.
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by Kathryn Hill on February 4, 2008
dotSUB allows users to create their own captions/subtitles on online videos. From their website:
dotSUB is a browser based tool enabling subtitling of videos on the web into and from any language. There is nothing to buy and nothing to download. Recognizing the potential of global communication powered by the Internet, the founders of dotSUB created a web-based tool that enables video to be accessed in an open, collaborative, “wiki” type environment. The dotSUB tool gives anyone the ability to translate video content into multiple languages via subtitles rendered over the bottom of the video.
by Kathryn Hill on October 4, 2007
Editor’s Note: In this post I’ve got a link that is tagged with “(NSFW).” This means Not Safe For Work viewing, due to adult content.
I just discovered
DeafBunny (NSFW), a deaf-owned adult entertainment company that films porn using deaf actors that communicate with each other in American Sign Language. There are even subtitles if your sign isn’t very good. Looks like they only have one movie so far –
Naughty Deaf Roommates.
My first thought: “Huh, so that’s what they talk about in porn.” Interesting idea. I hope they keep it up.
by Kathryn Hill on October 4, 2007
by Kathryn Hill on October 4, 2007
Blinkx is an Internet search engine for video (and audio) content. It’s unique from other video search engines in that it uses speech-to-text technology, advanced video analytics, and reads text transcripts (including closed captioned files) to find videos. An useful feature for deafies: type “captions” in the search field and it will find captioned videos on the Internet.
by Kathryn Hill on September 30, 2007
Via Accessible Web Design Workshop:
AOL is now testing closed captions for streaming news content from CNN that will enhance the online media experience for people who are deaf or hard of hearing. Captioned CNN video content will beavailable throughout the AOL network, including the AOL service, the free AOL.com Web portal, and the AOL Video portal.
I checked it out myself, and I didn’t find any captioned videos via http://video.aol.com/, but a search on their site found this page:
Closed captioning provides members who are deaf or hard-of-hearing with enhanced access to select video content including entertainment programming, news updates and AOL® Member Education tutorials. If available, closed captions appear directly beneath a video and correspond to the audio content.Available closed-captioned content includes:
- CNN closed-captioned Quickcast: The latest news updated 3 times a day. Go to AOL® Keyword: Video, then click the News channel.
- Princess Natasha: The latest Princess Natasha episodes can be viewed with closed captions at AOL Keyword: KOL, or by signing on to the AOL® service using a Kids Only screen name.
Previously:
CaptionKeeper – captions from TV to the Web
Project ReadOn – free web captions
Closed Captioning for Flash
Speche Communications: real time text streaming
