Accessibility, Crazy (Event Gripping) Ideas
… which is in stark contrast to the ultra-Orthodox attitude against people with disabilities.
The captioned (in Hebrew) video clip is the second video in http://www.hofesh.org.il/articles/books/books.html (in Hebrew), and it is about a book shop, which avoids displaying an anti-religion book due to threats from the town’s rabbi’s wife.
Gordon Bell has captured a lifetime’s worth of articles, books, cards, CDs, letters, memos, papers, photos, pictures, presentations, home movies, videotaped lectures, and voice recordings and stored them digitally. Phil Libin does something somewhat similar.
When I read about them, I wonder about the times they do something not accordance with law and norms prevailing around them, such as going to call girls, smoking marijuana, shoplifting, meeting with one’s employer’s competitors, having a luscious phone call with one’s mistress, wanking in public restroom, getting a syphilis treatment, farting, peeping into forbidden windows, eating food forbidden by one’s religion, reading subversive books, etc.
Matzliach (מצליח) is an Hebrew word meaning “successful”. The Matzliach Method is asking for more than what you are entitled to. If the other side does not object, you get more. If the other side objects, you get what you are entitled to. This method works when there is no penalty for trying to get more than what you are entitled to.
Israel has two high volume dailies – Ma’ariv and Yedioth Aharonot. The issue price for both is 4.80NIS during the week, and 10.50NIS on Fridays, when the issues are larger. The holiday eve issues are usually larger and cost 10.50NIS apiece, even when the holiday eve does not fall on Friday.
Today is the Israeli Independence Day eve. Today, Ma’ariv and Yedioth Aharonot put out larger issues. Ma’ariv charges 10.50NIS for its issue, whereas Yedioth Aharonot charges 4.80NIS.
This discrepancy in prices let the groceries and other vendors of newspapers enjoy a windfall by applying the Matzliach method as follows.
The shopkeeper claims that the printed Yedioth Aharonot price is a typo and the real price is 10.50NIS. If a customer buys this argument, the shopkeeper makes a nice profit. If the customer argues back, pointing out the absence of any billboard notice about this, the shopkeeper backs off and lets the customer buy the newspaper for 4.80NIS.
Mark Drolsbaugh is a Deaf guy, who also runs workshops for hearing parents of deaf children.
In his Evolution of a Cochlear Implant Attitude article, he writes about getting a number of parents breaking down in tears in a simple workshop closing exercise:
“All I did was ask them to share positive traits and abilities their kids have. More specifically, traits and abilities that have nothing to do with deafness or the ears. All I wanted was for them to stop looking at the disability and start looking at the ability. Even though I made my point, the emotional reaction catches me off guard.”
This reminded me of the deaf man from nightmares. This man, DB, is a deaf psychologist, who is very strong advocate of oralism. He spends a lot of time improving and polishing his speech. What I find especially troubling about him is that every time we meet, in a social function of the hearing impaired, the one and only subject, which he would discuss with me, is the uttermost importance of my getting speech therapy and improving my speech. Nothing else is important or worthy of discussion. SHUDDER!
We the deaf are not only ears. We are also software development, sports, art, parenting, and simply living human beings. This is what those parents and DB failed to acknowledge.
10 ways for support techs to stay healthy and safe on the job offers the following advice:
#2: Wash your hands between visits.
The newly announced http://www.stackoverflow.com/ Web site confines all communications to the audio format. No provision for textual transcription of the audio podcasts exists. Users’ submissions are accepted only if they are in audio format. This is probably the founders’ newest idea for filtering out spam and flames.
However, it is a case of rude inaccessibility. Please do not contribute and do not browse the Web site – and let the founders know your opinion about this case of throwing out the baby with the bathwater.
The announcements in the founders’ blogs are as follows:
What next, a Web site, which excludes gay software developers?
The podcasts are now transcribed into text, making them accessible to the deaf as well as being helpful to people, who want to discover them using search engines, and people having no time to listen through the entire podcast.
The transcription mechanism is Wiki-based, allowing people to transcribe text piece by piece. So even if you have only 15 minutes to spare, you can still make a contribution.
It is still necessary to persuade them to accept questions as text in addition to sound clips…
I am a recycling plant.
I extract energy from your organic trash and use it in my other recycling processes.
I extract pure water from your sewage water.
I separate rare metals from your inorganic solid waste and sell them to manufacturers of goods.
I developed technologies for inexpensive transportation of your wastes into me.
I have advanced technologies for separating out mixtures, so that you will not need to sort your own trash.
I invest a lot into R&D for developing cheaper and better methods of processing your refuse.
I have lobbyists in legislature bodies, who cause the appropriate laws to be passed, so that it is cheaper for you to sell me your refuse for a pittance, than to dispose of it in manner which pollutes the environment.
I hand out research grants to scientists, who research methods for separating radioactive nuclei out of material, with the goal of purifying radioactive wastes.
(Translation from inscriptions on a marble slab, which was found in Antarctica after all ice was dissolved due to global warming, and which is believed to be 65 million years old.)
As I was enjoying the article DNA seen through the eyes of a coder, a link caught my eye and it directed me to Ensembl Human Web site, which lets you explore the Homo sapiens genome.
The home page showed the usual 23 chromosome pairs. However I was startled to find yet another chromosome mentioned – MT.
I made the quick guess that it is the mitochondrial chromosome, and wanted to confirm or refute this guess. However, the Web site search function yielded nothing when I looked for the phrase “chromosome mt”. I was provided instead with a form for sending E-mail to the Web site’s helpdesk. I took advantage of this.
Few minutes later, they answered me – yes, it is indeed the mitochondrial chromosome.
One additional comment in their answer was made, because I phrased my question in an highly emotional way, as follows:
“I was looking for a short paragraph describing what the hell is ‘Chromosome MT’.”
The comment woke in me nightmare past memories of a primary school teacher in USA, who subscribed to the DEAF-L mailing list (a mailing list devoted to deafness related issues), but her censorware filtered out innocent messages because they included phrases, which could have been interpreted in objectionable ways. And furthermore, there was no way to bypass the censorware to tell her that a legitimate message has been blocked.
I am not going to participate in the Earth Hour, which is due to be held tonight in Tel Aviv between 20:00-21:00.
This is in spite of my support for the idea of taking care of our environment.
The reason – due to my deafness, I need light and various electronic appliances to communicate with other people.
Note: I do not live in Tel Aviv itself, but I’d participate in the project if it were not for the accessibility issue.
Additional links:
The end of the “The Idiot’s Lantern” episode of Doctor Who, which I saw yesterday night in BBC Prime (broadcast as channel 30 in Israeli cable TV), shows Tommy forgiving Eddie, his abusive father, after Eddie was thrown out of home by Rita, his wife and Tommy’s mother.
Since this scene has the psychological effect of weakening the resolve of domestic abuse victims, I wonder whether someone in the Doctor Who production team is himself an abusive husband/father, who did not have an interest in lending moral support to abuse victims, who at last decide to do something about their situation.