New Jersey Department of Human Services Division of the Deaf and Hard of Hearing June 2007 Vol. 28 No. 6 Jon S. Corzine Governor Jennifer Velez, Acting Commissioner Ira C. Hock, Acting Director DDHH Adds CapTel to Equipment Distribution Program Starting July 2007, CapTel will be included among the devices offered in the NJ Division of the Deaf and Hard of Hearing equipment distribution program. Sixteen years ago, DDHH implemented the first phase of the program by providing free TTYs to eligible New Jersey residents with hearing loss. At that same time, AT&T began providing telephone relay services in New Jersey, the result of the signing of the Page 6 Americans with Disabilities Act. Over the years, countless devices have been given to Tips for your Patient New Jersey residents with hearing loss or speech impairment. with Hearing Loss in Social Situations CapTel (abreviated for Captioned Telephone) is new telephone tech- Page 10 nology which allows people to DDHH April Advisory receive real time word-for-word Council Meeting captions of their telephone conver- sations. It is similar in concept to Captioned Television, where spo- Page 11 ken words appear as written text DHS Hosts for viewers to read. “Day of Remembrance” The CapTel phone looks and works Page 13 like any traditional phone, with American Sign callers talking and listening to each Language Story Hour other, with one very significant dif- ference: Captions are displayed on the phone's built-in screen so the user can read the words while listening to the voice of the other party. This allows the CapTel phone user who may experience difficulty hearing what the caller says, to read the captions for clarification. For subscribers of the service, captions are provided automatically for every phone call made to or from the phone line assigned tothe service. The individual wishing to have the CapTel service must assign a particular phone line(s) to it. This allows every incoming and outgoing call to automatically implement the service. Then, when the CapTel subscriber receives or makes any call on their spe- cially designed CapTel telephone, the call is transparently connected to the CapTel service center which provides the captioning. At the CapTel service center, a specially trained operator, instantly repeats what is said by the party being called which is rec- ognized by voice recognition software which in turn translates the information into text captions. This text information is bundled with the speaking party's actual voice and sent through the telephone connectivity (wired or wireless) to the CapTel phone. Continued on next page continued from page 1 When the CapTel phone receives this combined information, the voice and text are split so that the voice is transmitted into the receiver of the CapTel user and the text appears on the display screen of the CapTel device. With the addition of CapTel, other devices in the DDHH equipment distribution program include amplified telephones, smoke detectors, carbon monoxide detectors, baby alert systems, and artificial larynx devices. The eligibility require- ments for receiving these devices vary slightly. If you would like an application, please contact the DDHH office at 800-792-8339 V/TTY, 609-984-0390 FAX. If you are considering a device but want some hands-on experience with these devices, and other devices that are not part of the program, contact DDHH Field Representative Traci Burton or Jason Weiland at: [email protected] or [email protected]. They will gladly schedule an appoint- ment at one of two demonstration centers, - West Trenton or New Brunswick. Individuals who have already received one of the other phones in DDHH’s equipment distribution program, must wait five years before being eligible for CapTel. If you would like additional information about CapTel, check out captionedtelephone.com or contact 888-269-7477 Voice; 866-670-9134 español; 800-482-2424 TTY; and, [email protected] Correction In the April issue of the Monthly Communicator, page 18 - Communicator Signboard section, the bottom ad should have been for Northwest Jersey Association of the Deaf. Monthly Communicator Acting Director: Ira C. Hock Reminder: Editor: Alan Champion NJ Department of Human Services The deadline for submissions to the Division of the Deaf and Hard of Hearing September issue of Monthly PO Box 074 Communicator is August 1, 2007. Trenton, NJ 08625-0074 (609) 984-7281 V/TTY (800) 792-8339 V/TTY Send e-mail submissions to the editor (609) 984-0390 Fax [email protected] [email protected] www.state.nj.us/human services/ddhh The Monthly Communicator is published by the New Jersey Photos which accompany submissions Department of Human Services Division of the Deaf and Hard of Hearing (DDHH), a state agency. DDHH provides informa- are encouraged. For instructions on tion, referral, and advocacy to service recipients. Information how to submit photos, contact the edi- or articles provided by others does not imply endorsement by tor at the email address above. DDHH or the State of New Jersey. There are currently 8,600 copies of the MC distributed monthly. Deadline for submissions: First of the month for the following month’s edition 2 This Month In History Julia Brace was born on June 13, 1807 and became Deaf-Blind at age five from typhus fever. She gradually stopped speaking and developed a system of home sign which she used with her parents. She was sent to a boarding school with hearing and sighted children before being offered a place at the Hartford Asylum for the Deaf and Dumb (now called the American School for the Deaf), where she enrolled on June 11, 1825, two days before her 18th birthday. She acquired tactile American Sign Language from the resi- dent Deaf students and staff at the Hartford school. Brace boarded at the Hartford school until 1860. She left the school to take up residence with her sister in Bloomfield, Connecticut, where she died on August 12, 1884, The Hartford Asylum for the Deaf and Dumb aged 77. as it looked when Julia Brace attended. Laurent Clerc (born Louis Laurent Marie Clerc) was born December 26, 1785 in La Balme les Grottes, department of Isere, France, a village on the northeastern edge of Lyon. Clerc has been called "The Apostle of the Deaf in America" and "The Father of the Deaf" by generations of American Deaf people. With Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet, he co-founded the first school for the Deaf in North America, the Hartford Asylum for the Education and Instruction of the Deaf and Dumb on April 15, 1817 in the old Bennet's City Hotel, Hartford, Connecticut. The school was subsequently re-named The American School for the Deaf and in 1821 moved to its present site. The school remains the oldest existing school for the Deaf in the United States. Andrew Foster was born on June 27, 1925 in Ensley, Alabama, and the first African-American graduate of Gallaudet University. Foster got a Master's Degree from Seattle Pacific Christian College, and went to Africa in 1957 where he encountered cultures so oppressive of Deaf peo- ple that parents often hid their Deaf children at home or abandoned them altogether. Hearing missionaries told Foster that Deaf children didn't even exist in Africa. He did find Deaf children and established 31 schools for the Deaf in Africa. Among the countries where these schools were established are Benin, Congo, Chad, Ivory Coast, Kenya, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, and Cameroon. Andrew Foster's life was cut short in a plane crash in 1987, the Deaf culture lost a strong influence. Helen Keller was born in Tuscumbia, Alabama, on June 27, 1880. At nineteen months of age she came down with an illness described by doctors as "an acute congestion of the stomach and the brain," which could have possibly been scarlet fever or meningitis. The illness left her Deaf and blind. By age seven, she had invented over sixty different signs that she could use to communicate with her family. Keller's parents contacted the Perkins Institute for the Blind, where the school delegated teacher and former student, Anne Sullivan, herself visually impaired, to be Keller's teacher. It was the beginning of a 49-year-long relation- ship. Anne was able to teach Helen to speak using the Tadoma method (touching the lips and throat of a speaker in order to understand what is being said) com- bined with fingerspelling alphabetical characters on the palm of Helen's hand. Later, Keller would also learn to read English, French, German, Greek, and Latin in Braille. Keller devoted much of her later life to raise funds for the American Helen Keller (left) listens with her hands Foundation for the Blind. She died on June 1, 1968, passing away 26 days before while teacher and life long companion her 88th birthday, in her Easton, Connecticut home. In 2003, the state of Anne Sullivan reads to her. Alabama honored Keller, a native of the state, on its state quarter. 3 New Jersey Association of the Deaf announces its 20th Biennial State Conference “Deaf Diversity: Moving Forward" Saturday, July 28 Conference admission is free for early registrants. Exhibition, Seminars and BBQ Luncheon NJAD General Meeting and Election of New Officers followed by Evening Reception and Miss Deaf New Jersey Pageant at Marie Katzenbach School for the Deaf For conference information and registration, go to www.NJADeaf.org Exhibit form also available on the Web site for organizations, services providers and vendors. 4 NJ Relay and DDHH present Taste of Technology Conference On Thursday, June 21, NJ Relay will co-host the first-ever “Taste of Technology” Conference with DDHH.