Original Rubber Stamping Flyer – March 2010
(Adobe Acrobat required)

“FACE-PAINTING” with

Non-Manual Signals in ASL

Non-manual signals (NMS) in American Sign Language enrich and clarify the meaning of manual signs.  Come and learn the art of painting your face with a full spectrum of NMS colors and designs.

Non-Manual Signals include: 1) Non-Manual Adverbs 2) Lexical Non-Manual Behaviors 3) Non-Manual Grammatical Markers 4) Emotional States / Evaluative judgments 5) Prosodic Structure 6) Discourse Structure 7) Turn Taking Backchannel Feedback 9) Grammatical “Sound” Markers, and 10) Mouth Movements.

This workshop will focus on developing accurate non-manual signals and markers as used in ASL. Demonstrations of each category of facial behaviors and head movements will be shown in context. Practice exercises will be offered.  By the end of this workshop, you’ll be an artist!

April 3, 2010

Saturday, 9 am – 4 pm

at

Parkwood Baptist Church

8726 Braddock Road

Annandale, VA 22003

BIO: Patricia (Trix) Bruce, from Seattle, Washington, is known nationwide as both a workshop presenter and an American Sign Language performer. Trix’s work has been warmly received everywhere, from local community centers, to state, regional and national conferences, Deaf Way II, interpreter conventions and more.  Wildly popular as a teacher of ASL storytelling and ASL interpretation, Trix impresses audiences at all levels of ASL skill, from novices to fluent experts. Trix has been profoundly deaf since she was 6 months old. She went through oral, mainstreaming, deaf classes, and online educational programs. Trix has been involved in the performing arts since 1980. After completing her college program, she became involved with interpreter training. Trix’s main area of study has been ASL Linguistics with a focus on ASL Performance.  She has developed a popular website: www.trixbruce.com. Whether writing, creating, improvising or starring in her many productions, Trix’s passion for the dramatic arts shines through.

REGISTERATION FEE:  $65 per participant, postmarked by March 26, 2010

$75 per participant at the door

SEND $ TO: (payable to/paypal accept) Trix Bruce, 1429 D Ave PMB 362, Snohomish, WA 98290

PLEASE RSVP/CONTACT: by April 2, 2010 Info@trixbruce.com

RID CUEs: RID CUEs:  Trix Bruce is an Approved RID CMP Sponsor for Continuing Education Activities. This Professional Studies program is offered for 0.6 CEUS at the Little/No to Some Content Knowledge Level.

NOTES: Handouts will be provided.  The workshop will be presented in ASL; a voice interpreter will not be provided.   Lunch is on your own. Checks are non-refundable. For details on refund, cancellation, and special accommodations policies, please send an email to info@trixbruce.

Mentoring /Private Tutors/Booking/Evaluating AVAILABLE/More Info Contact:Info@TrixBruce.com

Announcing the 2010 AHEAD in Virginia Student Scholarships

Attached is the application form for the 2010 AHEAD in Virginia Student Scholarships.  A total of three scholarships are available for $1,000 each and will be awarded in each of three categories:

1. an undergraduate in a 4-year institution (Bachelors Degree)
2. a graduate student
3. a student enrolled in a 2-year institution (Associates Degree or less)

Criteria for these scholarships include:

1.      Applicant MUST be a student with a disability registered with the disability services office on your campus.

2.      Your institution MUST be a member of AHEAD in Virginia for 2009-2010 (either individual or institutional membership – membership application is attached)

3.      Applicants are evaluated based on    a) leadership and service to campus and/or community

b) academic achievement

c) well articulated goals

Deadline is 5:00 p.m., April 28, 2010! Questions may be directed to the AHEAD in Virginia Scholarship Committee Chair:

Kate Broderick, Director

Disability Services

Old Dominion University

(757) 683-4655

(757) 683-5356 (fax)

kbroderi@odu.edu
2010 AHEAD in Virginia Scholarship Application

In addition, video programming distributors are required to submit their contact information for the handling of immediate closed captioning concerns and written complaints to the FCC by March 22, 2010, for posting on the FCC’s website.  Once the database of information is ready, the Commission will issue a Public Notice informing consumers  about the availability of the information and instructing them on how to search and find their distributor’s contact information.

To read the revised closed captioning Fact Sheets, please see:

http://www.fcc.gov/cgb/consumerfacts/closedcaption.html

http://www.fcc.gov/cgb/consumerfacts/dtvcaptions.html

http://www.fcc.gov/cgb/consumerfacts/CC_converters.html

To see the Commission’s website on closed captioning, please visit:

http://www.fcc.gov/cgb/dro/caption.htm

- Thanks to NVRC, Fairfax

Click here to view the FCC ruling in a PDF format. Click here to view the FCC ruling in an ASL video.

Posted by Hiroto Tokusei, Product Manager

(cross-posted from the Official YouTube Blog)
http://googlepublicpolicy.blogspot.com/2010/03/future-will-be-captioned-improving.html

Tens of millions of people in the U.S. experience some kind of hearing impairment and recent studies have predicted that over 700 million people worldwide will suffer from hearing impairment by 2015. To address a clear need, the broadcast industry began running captions on regular video programming in the early 1970s. Today, closed captions on video are more prevalent than ever. But generating captions today can be a time-consuming and complicated process.

Making video easily accessible is something we’re working hard to address at YouTube. One of the first steps we took was the development of a caption feature in 2008. In November of last year we released auto-captioning for a small, select group of partners. Auto-captioning combines some of the speech-to-text algorithms found in Google’s Voice Search to automatically generate video captions when requested by a viewer. The video owner can also download the auto-generated captions, improve them, and upload the new version. Viewers can even choose an option to translate those captions into any one of 50 different languages — all in just a couple of clicks.
Today, we are opening up auto-captions to all YouTube users. There will even be a “request processing” button for un-captioned videos that any video owner can click on if they want to speed up the availability of auto-captions. It will take some time to process all the available video, so here are some things to keep in mind:

• While we plan to broaden the feature to include more languages in the months to come, currently, auto-captioning is only for videos where English is spoken.
• Just like any speech recognition application, auto-captions require a clearly spoken audio track. Videos with background noise or a muffled voice can’t be auto-captioned. President Obama’s speech on the recent Chilean Earthquake is a good example of the kind of audio that works for auto-captions.
• Auto-captions aren’t perfect and just like any other transcription, the owner of the video needs to check to make sure they’re accurate. In other cases, the audio file may not be good enough to generate auto-captions. But please be patient — our speech recognition technology gets better every day.
• Auto-captions should be available to everyone who’s interested in using them. We’re also working to provide auto-captions for all past user uploads that fit the above mentioned requirements. If you’re having trouble enabling them for your video, please visit our Help Center: this article is for uploaders and this article is for viewers.

For content owners, the power of auto-captioning is significant. With just a few quick clicks your videos can be accessed by a whole new global audience. And captions can make is easier for users to discover content on YouTube.
Twenty hours of video is uploaded to YouTube every minute. Making some of these videos more accessible to people who have hearing disabilities or who speak different languages, not only represents a significant advancement in the democratization of information, it can also help foster greater collaboration and understanding.

- Thanks to NVRC, Fairfax