Category: rant

Freedom of expression for primary and high school teachers

I was prompted to write this by a request, which I received today.

Some background information: large part of the contents of my DEAF-INFO Web site is material, which was posted to the DEAF-L mailing list by various subscribers over the years. When the mailing list was active, I saved the best posts and put them in the Web site, with attribution to the original contributor.

The request, which I received today, was to remove the attributions to a particular contributor.

In the past I received similar requests. Upon further questioning, it turned out that most of those requests were made by people, who expressed their strong opinions about various deafness related issues, while they were students. Few years later, they were to get jobs as teachers in schools of the deaf. Then they were concerned that they’ll get into trouble because of the opinions, which they expressed in the past.

I asked someone, who teaches in a regular primary school, about this. She explained to me that teachers are forbidden to publicly express their opinions. The teachers are usually state or county employees. The only people authorized to publicize opinions are the employer’s public relations specialists.

I believe that this state of affairs is rather unfortunate. Teachers work “in the trenches” – they deal with pupils with learning disabilities, they deal with non-working educational methodologies, they deal with poorly-designed materials. They should be able to criticize non-working methods of instruction. If their school principal does not improve the methods, the teachers should be free to publicize their criticism. This would allow parents to ultimately have a say in improving the quality of instruction their children receive.

This is important especially in the area of deaf education, which is especially rife with conflict among different goals (integration vs. separate identity), philosophies (oral vs. Sign Language) and a bewildering choice of communication methods.

37758969372093th Reason to Hate Wars

Any relationship between the publicized schedule of broadcasts of channels 1 and 10 and the actual broadcasts has been lost.
As a consequence, yesterday I missed my weekly infusions of “Veronica Mars” (channel 10), “The Simpsons” and “Stargate” (channel 1). I expect to miss also “Lost” (channel 10, tonight).

AAARRRRGGGGGHHHHHH!!!!!!!

Accessibility problem from which even mighty Google suffers

In several forms – both paper and Web-based ones – you are expected to enter a phone number.
The phone number presumably needs to be a valid one.
Some Web based forms enforce this. They validate the phone number and do not allow you to proceed unless you enter a valid phone number.

However, in my case, no matter what phone number I enter, it is not a valid phone number. At least according to the criteria that if anyone makes a phone call to that number, he/she’ll get a reply from me. I am deaf and never use the phone for talking.

In order to be true to the spirit of the forms, I need to enter a FAX number, and indicate that it is a FAX number rather than a phone number.

The snag is that by entering “FAX +972-x-xxxxxxx” or something similar (972 is the international prefix of Israel), I run afoul of the validating software behind some Web sites. Especially Web sites running Google programs, such as Google Analytics.

So in order to proceed, I am forced to enter a nonsense phone number, lie or skip when this is possible.

There may be also people, who do not have their own phone number at all, not even for FAX messages. Yet they surf the Internet. How would they cope with such bossy forms, which require something which looks like a phone number?

Hello Eurocomm?

Few years ago I bought a Nokia 9110 cellular phone-FAX, after having developed Hebrew support for it. Eventually, I upgraded to Nokia 9210i. Now Eurocomm is advertising Nokia 9300, and I am considering buying one.

However, there are two problems:

  • Their ads advertise a Web site and toll free phone number. No FAX number even though the 9300 has also FAX capability and part of its target market are the deaf.
  • The Web site is not effective for selling Nokia 9300 because they do not answer people who fill the online form and inquire about the product (if to judge from my experience in going through the above twice).

It is a shame to require deaf people to go in person to Eurocomm to buy this cellular phone if the normally-hearing can arrange for this without leaving their homes.

I got fed up!

In my response to someone else’s response to my response in someone else’s blog, I wrote:

I got fed up!

I am Deaf, not hard of hearing!!

Due to some mysterious reason, I fall between the chairs among the hard of hearing and the Deaf.

In the Deaf Community, I am considered to be hard of hearing due to all kinds of reasons, such as educational level, which are not relevant to the communication ability per se.

Among the hard of hearing, I am considered as deaf. When Keshev (an Israeli organization of the hard of hearing and deafened adults, which went bankrupt at 1992) was active, I was not eligible to be a regular member in this organization, due to a prohibition in the organization’s constitution on letting deaf persons become members of Keshev. When Bekol (another organization of the hard of hearing and deafened adults, which replaced Keshev and is active today) started the “7th Ear” group (a social group of the hearing impaired, which was active in Tel Aviv area), I was not invited to participate in this group due to the same reason.

Functionally, I am deaf as far as my ability to use sound to help me understand speech is concerned. I can hear some sounds using a strong hearing aid, but not to use them to understand better speech.

And if anyone says again that I am “hard of hearing” rather than “deaf”, I’ll force him to sit down (and fall) between two chairs!!!

I decided to do something about Norwegian Socialist Left party's boycott of Israel

My DEAF-INFO Web site, which disseminates deafness related information, and which is targeted at worldwide audience, now has a notice to supporters of the Norwegian Socialist Left party’s anti-Israel policy. The notice proclaims that they should not visit my Web site if they support their party’s anti-Israeli policy.

Bibi Netanyahu and the First Zionist Congress at 1897

Bibi Netanyahu was excellent Minister of Finance, who saved the Israeli economy from the fate of Argentinian economy. Too bad people do not recognize this fact and are angry with him due to cutbacks in handouts to poor people. They do not realize that if Netanyahu hadn’t cut back those handouts, those handouts would have suffered much more serious and less controlled cuts as the Israeli economy collapses.

Bibi Netanyahu was OK as Prime Minister.

However I am not happy with one thing which he failed to accomplish.
This failing is a reason why I and other people do not remember the exact date of the first Zionist Congress at 1897.

You see, Bibi Netanyahu was Prime Minister at 1997. However, he failed to arrange for celebrations to mark 100 years since the first Zionist Congress. The event could be used to explain to the world why Zionism was necessary given the status of the Jews in Europe and Russia at the time. Why Zionism is not as discriminatory as an affirmative action type movement. What problems Zionism set out to solve.

However, since the original Zionist ideology was different in details from Netanyahu’s ideology, budgetary excuses were invoked to avoid celebrating the event.

Ten years later, we have a chance to partially fix this oversight. At 2007, we can celebrate 110 years to the first Zionist Congress. Let’s start preparing for this.

Lack of accessibility kills people (or: why I am not using the Israeli train system now)

Few days ago, Shmuel Katz, an hearing-impaired and sight-impaired man, was killed by the train in Tel Aviv.
He boarded the wrong train, and when trying to leave it in haste, he was trapped at the train’s door and was killed.

The root cause for his death is insufficient accessibility of train related information to people with hearing and sight impairments. Information about the destination of the current train in a platform is not always displayed, and announcements over the public address system are, of course, not heard by hearing impaired people.

The problem of the announcements is the reason why I stopped using the train until further notice.

My parents live in Jerusalem, not far from the Malacha train station in southwest Jerusalem.
When the train line to Jerusalem was reopened, I made frequent use of it to travel from Petah Tikva to Jerusalem and back. Since the reason for trips was to visit family rather than business or work, I did not mind the schedule problems of the train.

However, one day I read in the newspaper that due to schedule problems, the management canceled the stops in Bnei Berak, Petah Tikva and Rosh Hayin in a train run passing through Petah Tikva. The cancellations were announced in the public address system. This incident was newsworthy, because the passengers, who expected to leave the train in the canceled stops, blocked the train’s doors open and prevented it from leaving the station it was in Tel Aviv. The train run was canceled.

If I were on that train, I’d not have a clue about the happening, and would have risked finding myself in Hod Hasharon instead of my destination – Petah Tikva – and since there are no convenient bus lines from the Kfar Sava-Hod Hasharon train station to “my” train station, I would have wasted several hours getting back to my car parked in the Petah Tikva train station.

Therefore I decided to go back to using my car to visit my parents in Jerusalem, until the train becomes 100% accessible to hearing impaired people, and the management demonstrates more scheduling responsibility.

Alarming plans of Israeli political parties re: Internet usage

According to today’s Ma’ariv, the political parties are planning to make heavy use of the Internet. The arsenal of tools to be used will include interactive ads, viral distribution of E-mail messages, and even astrosurfing.

The alarming aspect of the plans is that even spam E-mail will not be ruled out.

I have the policy of boycotting any entity which spams me. However, if all political parties choose to stoop to spamming me, for which party will I vote? 🙁

Source: Ma’ariv’s Saturday Supplement, pg. 7, article by Nadav Eyal “Spam E-mail from _____” (the actual name was censored to prevent online defamation until proved guilty).