7: Saturday Deaf News & Coffee Roundup

AND YOU THOUGHT YOU HAD IT BAD DEPT.: In Uganda, over 40 Deaf people are languishing in prison. Why? Because the government makes no provisions for using sign language interpreters:

Alex Ndeezi, MP for Persons with Disability, said the courts do not provide for sign language.

"The deaf cannot communicate with the Police, magistrates and judges," he said on Wednesday.

The MP raised the issues during a debate on the report of the committee on equal opportunities.

This followed a 2006 petition by the Uganda National Association for the Deaf in which the members complained that they were sometimes denied justice. "They are unlawfully arrested and put in detention without trial," they said.

DEAF SCHOOLS ARE CLOSING ALL OVER DEPT.: In the UK, the Frank Barnes school for the Deaf is reportedly under danger of closing. Many American schools also cite shrinking populations as reasons for closing; however, Deaf Studies shows us that historically the Deaf population comes and goes in "waves" in America, and when services and schools close, the new wave must re-invent the wheel. Those who don't learn from the past are doomed to repeat it!

THOSE DEAF KIDS ARE CRAZY DEPT.: In South Africa, Deaf students are protesting:

The principal, Thabo Kgosana, said pupils had been boycotting classes since last Monday.

Spokesman for the Limpopo education department, Ndo Mangala, said the pupils accused the school management of not treating them well and the hostels of being in a state of disrepair.

I CAN'T SEE THE WORDS DEPT.: In other news, Canadian Deaf and hard-of-hearing people are protesting the lack of captioning at their elections. Similarly, Tayler Meyer reports not being able to see closed captioning on large televisions at the studio for So You Think You Can Dance. Of course, in-house closed-circuit television would likely be live and not have been captioned yet - but you'd think they could turn one to ABC, don't you? (They already do enough advertising!) American Deaf people have also been frustrated at the lack of captioning access online; however, with the recently-successful Writer's Guild strike in Los Angeles, maybe other groups will begin to see success in their campaign to make the Internet a truly neutral zone.