This workshop covers the P3, a Purple HOVRS product that deaf people use to make phone calls instead of text relay or TTY/TDD.
When: 4pm - 6pm Wednesday, January 27, 2010
Where: NorCal Outreach Office at 508 J Street, Marysville, CA 95901
More information:
VP 530-763-1537
Fax 530-740-7804
*Workshop is in ASL, if need other accomodations contact no later than 5pm Wednesday, January 20, 2010.
Ok I guess I am not going to retire this blog any sooner, plus three stories just landed into my lap. 
I think instead of retiring, I will just give this blog a fresh re-start.
I’ll do a couple things that I picked up from other blog communities I’m involved.
Master Open Discussion posts - these are posts that starting now, will allow visitors to ask open questions and other deaf/hard of hearing people can answer. These will happen every once a month. I may ramp it up to once two weeks or a week if there’s a lot of activity.
Events - people are always welcome to send in event notifications for the Yuba-Sutter area that involves deafness. Just e-mail hnoda@appeal-democrat.com.
Vlogs - this is going to be tricky since it takes more time than typing out a quick blog post, but I’ll try to do a couple. I might do videoed interviews with locals.
Any questions? Comments?
I’m thinking of retiring this blog. Thoughts?
Hello all!
October is nearly upon us; Thursday will be October 1st, and that begins a month of Halloween-esque displays, events and advertising.
Marysville NorCal Services for Deaf and Hard of Hearing is throwing their annual event. This year it is based on the Addams’ Family with a mystery scavenger hunt. The folks running the mystery scavenger hunt will be dressed as the Addams Family for your entertainment.
When: Friday, October 16, 2009
Time: 6pm - 9pm
Where: Boyd Hall
Address: 1895 Lassen Ave. Yuba City, CA 95993
Cost: $10 per adult, $5 per child.
Come in your Halloween costume and enjoy some interesting Halloween themed cuisine! There will be interpreters provided so there should not be any lack of communication.
It is recommended you RSVP your tickets because after October 9, it will be cash only. RSVPing will also help the staff provide adequate amounts of food and drinks. All proceedings will go to supporting NorCal’s presence here in Marysville.
Contact Kim Dethlefsen-Koons for tickets.
Hope to see you there!
Click below to download the flyer.
I’m having a new experience with my current online class. I mentioned a while ago that I’m taking classes online and I use real-time captioners in the virtual classroom. It has been working really well up to now.
The problem?
My current teacher, also the only one that teaches this specific class, has a heavy accent. The poor captioner has a lot of difficulty understanding him, and so do other students because I got a couple e-mails from other students who knew me from past classes, if I caught what he said in this or that particular part of the lecture.
I have spoken to my student advisor about this and we’re trying to figure out how to solve this issue. Have you had this issue where you have someone speaking in a heavy accent and your interpreter or real-time captioner is struggling? What do you do? Just read the text and ask the teacher to clarify at points?
Update September 25, 2009. Turns out to be a microphone issue. The department chair got wind of this and investigated. Now the captioner is able to hear better and caption. But what I find funny is that my hearing counterparts in the class, are also using the captioning services to understand the lectures done online.
Saturday, September 19 is Deaf Awareness Day at the Sacramento Zoo. I wrote about it earlier here.
NorCal Services for Deaf and Hard of Hearing has a flyer up detailing information on Deaf Awareness Day at the Sacramento Zoo.
There are discounts for attendees, purchase made at the Zoofari Market and medium sized beverage. However, pets and service animals are not allowed in the zoo. There will be ASL interpreters all over the zoo for your convenience.
Go and have fun! 
The Outreach Advisory Commitee (OAC — the volunteer group that works to support Marysville NorCal Services for Deaf and Hard of Hearing) is gearing up for the Halloween event in October. A flyer will be coming out by the end of this week or next week with details of when, where and what.
Are you ready for Halloween fun? Last year, we did a series of games based on “The Price is Right” and the year before that, we did “Let’s Make a Deal.”
It appears this year’s theme is An Addams Family Mystery Scavenger Hunt.
Every Sunday morning at 11 AM, Arlene Artwood-Noteman is teaching Deaf Class at the Crossroads Community church.
I wanted to mention real quick that I got a response from our corporate on having captioning capability included on our Brightcove videos that we offer here on www.appeal-democrat.com and www.colusa-sun-herald.com, and any Freedom Communications Inc. property using Brightcove. Brightcove is our vendor for Internet videos on Freedom Communications Inc. properties. They are working to develop a timetable to deploy the feature on Brightcove videos.
While this means an ability to caption videos easily on the Brightcove platform, individual submitters like the everyday web site visitor, is not required to do this. The pending Bill which would mandate captioning of videos, applies only to the public realm on the Internet — news, television episodes, movies. It does not apply to the private individual who is submitting an Internet video.
Regardless, this feature should make it easier for folks to add captioning to their Internet videos.
I’m feeling hopeful today.
I spent about 30 minutes yesterday writing a personal letter to my representative here, to co-sponsor or at least support the Bill which I blogged about yesterday. I also heard from my very good friend in Minnesota this morning, that she wrote to her representative Al Franken, to support the Bill as well. She’s not deaf or hard of hearing — she did it because she believes that I, as well as others, should get the same access that hearing people do when viewing Internet videos. I also e-mailed and texted some of my Deaf friends to notice this and support the Bill. I got an e-mail from a hard of hearing friend, who said that she “firmly believe that all news videos should be captioned. This not only serves deaf and hard of hard of hearing but people learning to read English.” when I asked her if she thought that the Internet videos we offer online, should be captioned regardless of the length.
I just sent an e-mail to our corporate’s video lead this morning, about seriously considering adding captions to our Internet videos. I’m waiting to see how that goes. I mentioned the Bill, that there was technology already available for captioning Internet videos, and that we had attempted our hand at manually captioning a few here. I believe that if captions were included, there would be more page views and that the deaf and hard of hearing in the Yuba-Sutter would feel less excluded. I’ve yet to download and try out the Media Access Generator (MAGpie) which I saw yesterday. Just need to clear some time to do that in between the 20+ projects we have.
All we can do is step forth and see what happens.
Got a question? Something you want to bring to my attention? E-mail me!
Deaf Calendar Events are being listed on
CalDeaf Events Calendar, please visit them for the latest Deaf Events.
Also, if you are on Facebook, join the Deaf Californians here.
