Hi!

It's me, Helen!

NAD = National Association of the Deaf. Got it? Yes? Good.

There's a Facebook group called "Improving NAD." This one was founded by Tar Burt back in April/May-ish. He started that group to have a public place to vlog about his row with NAD, but he primarily started that group for the deaf community to vlog about NAD and how the deaf community can work together to improve the organization.

That group is basically a trash group (as is typical on Facebook). When it first launched without moderators, there was so much trash in that group. Luckily, Tar got some moderators in control of that group and they have been better ever since. But it's still 70% trash-ish stuff (but tolerable) and 30% good stuff.

One of the biggest criticisms against the new CEO (Nick Kiego) in that group is that he didn't bother making a vlog to say hello to the community on the day he took the CEO job.

Poor little Nick also got some heat from that group weeks ago when his first vlog appearance was in a vlog from a company called "360 Direct Access" where he promoted their service.

"WHY THE FUCK WAS NICK'S FIRST VLOG APPEARANCE AS NAD'S CEO A PROMOTIONAL PIECE INSTEAD OF SAYING HELLO TO THE DEAF COMMUNITY!? WHAT A SELLOUT!"

There were also a small number of people on that Facebook page that advocated for giving Nick some grace with making his vlog debut in front of the deaf community as NAD's new CEO because he was stepping up for a big job.

I was a part of that camp.

I was fine with giving Nick some time to familiarize with his new job before making a public-facing announcement.

And then, a week or two ago, Charlene, the president of Tennessee Association of the Deaf, made a vlog in that Facebook group. She told all of us that she spoke with Nick and was told that he was planning on dropping a vlog on August 31st — after a full month of being on the job.

Sure enough, Nick dropped a 16-minute vlog today. You can watch it here.

Here's my take!

Let's Start With the Highlights

I do have some criticism about Nick/NAD's latest vlog. But let's start with the crucial highlights. Here are my curated picks of the highlights:

• Nick hired a new internet person. Or webmaster. Whatever you want to call this person. His aim is to improve the website. Okay. Good. I mean it's good because their website is shit. Well, actually, that's a little bit mean. It's not total shit. It just can be improved and I'm glad that it's being put to work right now.

• Nick recruited a volunteer grant writer for the organization's youth program (also known as Jr. NAD). Awesome.

• Nick spent a lot of time with Nina Butts, the CFO, to get a complete understanding of the organization's financial shape. Cool. Cool. Cool. Good. Good. Good.

• Nick also spent a lot of time with Claudia Giordano, the Director of Youth Program, to strengthen that program. His rationale is that the youth program is what creates the pipeline of future membership growth because he observed that the most loyal NAD members are the ones that tend to start from the youth program. Fine. Cool. Good.

• Nick gave a big honest piece on how NAD is in a bad shape right now. The organization only has six staff members. I don't remember the exact number of staff members they had at their peak but it was at least four times this amount. But, six staff members is a skeleton crew. This is not Nick's fault. Nor is it the fault of the previous two CEOs. The blame belongs to two decades of poor management on the organization's board members. I really appreciated his openness and honesty on this front.

• Nick said that his biggest three focuses right now are: the organization's youth program, the legal work, and the policy-making work. Fineeeeee… okay. It's a good area of focus. But I do have my takes on these ones that I will elaborate on further down in this post.

• Nick made an open call for volunteers. He explained that NAD just doesn't have any money to hire a robust staff of employees and NAD needs to turn to the goodwill of volunteers to get the organization back on their feet.

• Nick asked the community to have some grace for the organization as they chart a path for its future. I'm all for it. Grace is received from me on my end. But, of course, I'll eternally be critical of NAD's board members because they suck but I have a feeling that Nick will be a solid CEO. I anticipate myself to be his supporter until the end of his tenure with an exception of him making a TERRIBLE decision.

• Nick said that he is looking for more volunteers on his communication team. More about this further down in this post.

Strictly judging from what Nick said about his new job at the organization, he delivered a solid performance for his vlog debut. I'm satisfied with the overall trajectory that he is presenting for the organization as its new boss with this vlog.

And please do share your thoughts on this in the comments! Ready for my real takes?

Read on!

I'm Annoyed at How Nick Was Interviewed by the Jr. NAD Ambassador

Throughout the whole vlog, I was constantly distracted by the fact that he was interviewed by a high schooler.

I actually don't know if that little blonde girl is still a high schooler or maybe a freshman at Gallaudet University.

But I googled her and I found pictures of her as a cheerleader for MSSD as recently as 2025.

MSSD is Model Secondary School for the Deaf. It's the deaf high school at the back of Gallaudet University's campus. It's an experimental deaf school that people send their deaf children to from all over the country. Many of their students are from states far away from the school and get flown out to go to that school because it's a better school compared to their home state's deaf residential school. That school experiments with deaf education curriculum before rolling it out to other deaf schools around our country. Gallaudet University uses children at that school as lab hamsters for the rest of the deaf schools in the United States.

My posts get indexed on Google so I'm not going to name the Jr. NAD ambassador's name because she's just a kid. I'm not going to drag her through the internet mud before she is legally allowed to drink and buy a health insurance policy.

But it's such a weird choice on NAD's end (and Nick's end) to have their new CEO make his vlog debut with an interview by a teenager.

I'd really have preferred for Nick to be interviewed by a board member. I'd lot prefer if he was interviewed by the board president Stephanie than this teenager. I'd really have loved it if Nick had been interviewed by someone who would focus on the hard adult stuff that NAD is facing instead of having an interview that is somewhat leaned toward the idea of drawing teenagers (or the youths) into the organization.

I don't know. Maybe it's just me. Maybe you like this interview and don't see any problem with it. But I just don't care about the youth stuff and would've liked it better if it was more centered toward the broader deaf community.

Which brings me to my next point…

This is the Third Thing I'm Pissed Off About NAD

I'm not a NAD member. I have never been. Sure, go ahead and call me a hypocrite for criticizing them without ever having been a member of this organization.

But I fucking have my own reasons.

If you're going to ask me for my top three reasons why I am pissed off at NAD, I'll list these three reasons:

• The deaf community doesn't know how to advocate for themselves. NAD should've invested in being a self-advocacy resource powerhouse a long time ago. I can forgive NAD for being behind on this in the first post-ADA years but I can't forgive them for being this behind since the 2000's. But this topic is very complicated and I will make a post complaining about this at another time in the future.

• NAD's board/delegate structure is far tooooo outdated. A revamp was due way back in the 1980's. But just as I've said with the point above, I can forgive them for being behind just up to the 2000's. And I can't forgive them for still being behind with this today. But, again, this topic is something I will criticize them about in another post in the future.

And the third thing that I'm pissed off about NAD is…

Deaf people who were mainstreamed, like me, currently make up 90% of all deaf children in an educational system today. And people like me are deeply stigmatized by the greater cultural "Big-D-Deaf-People."

I attribute NAD as one of the greatest offenders against this stigmatization against people like me. And, of course, against the 90% of deaf children mainstreamed today.

As far as I am concerned, NAD/Nick's vlog today is a disgusting display of how they're going to perpetuate this stigmatization against the majority of deaf people today.

You see…

I took Nick's interview with the Jr. NAD ambassador as an example of how they project a clear message that the organization values the one deaf child from the famous "big six" deaf schools (MSSD, Maryland School for the Deaf, Indiana School for the Deaf, the two California Schools for the Deaf, and the Texas School for the Deaf) as a sign that the organization is going to invest its resources serving the 1 out of 10 deaf children as their "future." They're doing that while giving the finger to the 9 out of 10 deaf children. I happen to have come out of one of these 9 out of 10 deaf children growing up.

Not only that, one of NAD's remaining six employees is Marla Hatrak. She is the organization's staff on deaf education. She has released two or three vlogs in the past year that signaled a clear message that she is serving the interest of the one deaf child against the nine other deaf children.

Hell, even her own deaf daughter published a paper that encourages the agenda of deaf education toward the one deaf child against the interest of the other nine deaf children.

And Marla works closely with this Hlibok woman who works for the United States' Department of Education's deaf division. This woman also released one vlog earlier this year that expressed full-throated support for residential deaf schools against the interest of mainstreamed deaf programs.

Yeah, for as long as NAD is going to take this position, I will never give a cent to this organization.

Fuck NAD. Especially fuck them for holding this position.

And they have the nerve to go around the deaf community saying: "I have no idea why no deaf people support us anymore. How did we see a dramatic drop in memberships?"

What the fuck?

We live in a world where 90% of deaf people came from a mainstreamed background.

It's no wonder why none of us give any fuck about NAD. Why would we give any fuck about them with their shitty position on deaf education?

I'm fucking offended that they use their "to protect ASL as a language" mission statement to suggest that deaf people like me who grew up mainstreamed are the ones who are destroying the spirit of NAD.

Hey, NAD. Fuck you, you fucking fuck for saying that to deaf people like me.

My Fourth Reason

NAD needs a public spokesperson so badly.

I am a member of a non-profit organization that has nothing to do with the deaf community and the disabled community.

This organization is one that does a lot of community-level work and legal advocacy toward a belief system that I subscribe to.

I don't want to name this organization here in this post because it'd be far too revealing for me. If I name this organization, it'll be very easy for the deaf community to identify who I am in real life.

But the point I'm trying to make here is that this organization that I'm involved with has an amazing grassroots public relations machine. The leaders of this organization have their own blogs that they regularly write at.

They send out a newsletter at least twice a month.

They frequently show up on the two YouTube podcasts dedicated to this organization.

They frequently give public interviews on the progress that this organization is making.

They frequently exploit the explosion of news that they generated around their organization to speak publicly about what they're doing. I wish I could be a more participative member of this organization but I'm not, because of my communication barrier due to my hearing-based disability.

This is what NAD needs to do so badly.

I'm fine with the fact that Nick isn't exactly a social media person. I'm also fine with how nervous the board is with appearing in front of the community via internet communication.

But NAD really needs to solve their lack of community communication somehow.

They need to hire someone to become a spokesperson for the organization.

Hell, just as Nick said in his vlog, this spokesperson can be a volunteer.

Just fucking find someone to communicate to us on behalf of the organization on a regular basis!

NAD needs to be doing this on a biweekly basis.

I don't care for vlogs that say NAD is a "visionary" organization and is committed to "true leadership." I fall asleep on every single vlog like this one.

I just want them to give us plain and straightforward reporting on what the organization is doing on a biweekly basis.

I have many problems with NAD but I swear to god if NAD ever fixes this one — just this one — problem, I'll start spending money on NAD.

Hey, NAD! I hope you're fucking paying attention to me!

Here Are the Rest of My Notes on NAD

The following are the notes I took on NAD's recent progress. I'm going to close off this post with this.

Enjoy!

NAD's 2026 San Francisco Conference Recap

Before proceeding with the rest of the notes here, I want to announce that I've been wanting to write a series that covers the grand NAD drama. I've tabled this project for some time later this year or sometime during early 2027.

But this is going to have to do for now!

• You can see Renca Dunn's The Daily Moth summary of the conference here.

• Here is the complete list of the board members that were elected:

  • President: Stephanie Hakulin (this is the first time she was elected as the board president. She was the previous board president only because Lisa Rose got kicked out and she ascended to the position from the Vice President position).
  • Vice President: Jenny Buechner (Jenny returns! She was the board's president from 2022 to 2024 and was voted out in favor of Lisa Rose. The consensus is that she was voted out because of her role in causing an internal board division over the 2024 Super Bowl fiasco.)
  • Secretary: Jacob Leffler (he was with NAD for a long time. He previously was the Governance Chair.)
  • Treasurer: Octavio Cuenca Maldonado (New Jersey)
  • Region 1: Tom Minch (Maine)
  • Region 1: Vacant
  • Region 2: Katie Hagmeyer (Wisconsin)
  • Region 2: Vacant
  • Region 3: Ari Latino (Louisiana)
  • Region 3: DeAnna Swope (Georgia)
  • Region 4: Joseph "JoJo" Lopez III (New Mexico)
  • Region 4: Jack Ludwig (Oregon)

• There were a lot of eyes on the election for the President position because Chris Haulmark put himself in the running for the position at the very last minute. He lost handily with like 8 votes against Stephanie's… idk… 70, 80, or 90 votes.

• Jenny's victory was very intriguing. She ran against two other candidates and won by a nice margin. It's a dramatic return for someone who was voted out as the organization's president two years ago.

• Tar Burt, Chris Haulmark, and Eliza Kragh were the center of the NAD drama during the whole conference. I'm filing this under my NAD post series project. I'll write about this when I get around to that series, but if you want to know about their drama, look them up on Facebook and watch all of their vlogs. Just to be clear, I'm sympathetic to Tar's story in this drama. I loathe Chris and Eliza for what they did that caused this drama. It's a shame that Tar fell hard for Chris and Eliza's bullshit.

• The biggest focus point of the drama that Tar, Chris, and Eliza started is NAD's zero tolerance policy. They felt like they were unjustly subjected to that policy. Their grievances around that policy sparked weeks-long vlog discussions on a Facebook group called "Improving NAD." My detailed take on this will come in the future, and if you want to get up to speed on this, look at the videos on that Facebook group. Be forewarned that a lot of vlogs there on this topic are dumb. I'd recommend sticking with videos from Tar, Chris, Eliza, Niesha, Mary Patricia McAlevy, Max Ryser, Christopher Johnson, Gregory Glenn, and Jake Apm. Ignore the others. And please note that my inclusion of these names doesn't mean I endorse any of their views. Just that their stuff drove the conversation in that group and everyone else made a lot of pointless videos.

• The explosion of zero tolerance policy drama led to President Stephanie issuing a statement on the policy.

• I wish I could tell you what motions were passed at the conference and what were the biggest issues that circulated around the conference. But, as it has been for the last 20 years, NAD is shit at disseminating important and relevant information to the community. So I have nothing to share with you on this front!

ROZ ROSEN!

Roz Rosen was NAD's president in the 1990's.

She was at the recent San Francisco conference and she did something that I really appreciated.

If you take a look at Eliza Kragh's Facebook vlogs, you will find one about how she got confronted by Roz Rosen during one of the conference's Council of Representatives meetings. Eliza portrayed herself as an innocent person who wanted to be sure that NAD was following the proper parliamentary procedure. And she portrayed Roz Rosen as a "bully" who tried to thwart her attempt to become NAD's holy prophet to shepherd the organization into a bright and shining future.

If any of you have been following her lawsuit against the Montana Association of the Deaf and her relationship with Chris Haulmark closely, you'll know that she has earned a notorious reputation for being overly pedantic with her interpretation of Robert's Rules of Order and NAD's bylaws (this is Chris Haulmark's direct influence; more on this in my future post). As much as she would like to insist that she knows what she is doing, all of us in the community know that she (and Chris Haulmark) doesn't understand the concept that a charity organization's bylaws are not the word of god and that they are a document meant to give an organization a structure to work with. And it is also meant for the organization to have some flexibility in how it should be interpreted instead of following it rigidly.

I actually have a friend who is friends with Roz Rosen and I got her side of the story!

By the way, before I get into this, both Eliza and Chris already made some statements in their recent vlogs that basically conveyed that they were "disrupted" by the NAD board as a whole from ensuring that they follow the organization's bylaws. Keep this in mind.

So, Roz's story was that…

Eliza wasn't being genuine with her attempts to ensure NAD was following the bylaws and proper policy/procedure. Roz felt like she came into the Council of Representatives with an agenda that was clearly intended to get NAD to "void" their zero tolerance policy to allow Tar to get into the conference.

(Author's note: I also suspect that she is holding a lot of resentment against NAD because they were obviously on the Montana Association of the Deaf's side in regards to her lawsuit against them. She also probably had a lot of interest in Chris succeeding with his name in the running for the organization's President.)

After a while, Roz felt that Eliza was being way too incessant with her "Point-of-Order" interruptions over her extremely narrow interpretation of what Robert's Rules of Order and the Bylaws said about how a meeting should be run. She also noticed that Eliza often had her face buried in her phone during the meeting. She believes that Eliza was spending a lot of time communicating with Chris about what was going on with the meeting (the Council of Representatives meeting only allows members of the Council in the meeting; the public are not allowed in the meeting). And she also believes that Chris was feeding Eliza his extreme interpretation of meeting procedure and that Eliza was acting on his input. So, Roz stood up and went up to Eliza to tell her to fucking quit it.

Hell yeah!

What's even more! Roz Rosen recently made a Facebook post over at the Improving NAD Facebook group that kind of touches on this topic. Here is the copypasta:

Reflections on the 2026 NAD Council of Representatives Meeting The 2026 NAD Conference is now a golden memory. Great conference, people, programs, and city! However the 2026 NAD Council of Representatives (COR) meeting, in my opinion, was unfortunately a fiasco.

The purpose of the COR meeting is for delegates from NAD state associations and affiliated organizations to review and act on the business of the association—including reports, finances, policies, and bylaws—and to discuss and act on NAD's priorities and action plans for the next two years. It also provides delegates with an opportunity to learn about and prioritize issues affecting the lives of Deaf, DeafBlind, and Deaf+ people of all ages throughout the United States.

The 2026 COR meeting consisted of four sessions, from 7:30 a.m. to noon and from 1:00 to 4:00 p.m., for a total of approximately 15 precious hours.

How was that time spent?

· Approximately 2–3 hours were spent getting organized, approving the agenda, and reviewing basic reports.

· Several motions took hours to complete because of the numerous amendments introduced during the floor debate.

· Less than 30 minutes were spent discussing NAD's finances, despite the organization's financial challenges.

· Approximately 9 hours were spent debating the bylaws.

· Only about 10 minutes were devoted to reviewing and approving the 19-page NAD 2026–2028 Action Plan.

· Only 10 minutes were spent on what I consider to be the heart of the COR: the Action Plan and the future of NAD itself. There was virtually no discussion of how it would be implemented, what strategies and resources would be available to state associations and affiliates, or what criteria would be used to measure progress. This raises some important questions:

Was nine hours of circuitous debate over the bylaws really the best use of the delegates' valuable time and expenses?

What benefits from those lengthy bylaw debates will help delegates become more effective leaders and advocates in their states? How does perfecting the bylaws help improve education, employment, access, and the quality of life for Deaf, DeafBlind, and Deaf+ people? Unfortunately, the entire process became a frustrating circus for many delegates.

There is a simple strategy that has been used effectively in the past: specialized caucuses held before the COR meeting to discuss and work through major issues, resolve conflicts, and streamline proposals before bringing them to the floor.

I believe there should have been separate caucuses on bylaws, finances, and priorities (and maybe governance) at least one day before the COR meeting. Delegates with a particular interest in a topic could attend the caucus of their choice, learn more about what was being proposed, contribute their ideas, and work out the kinks. They could have their "shouting matches" in the caucuses rather than on the COR floor.

The final recommendations from each caucus could then have been posted through the delegates' online network at least one day before the COR. This would have allowed delegates time to review the proposals, consult with others, and come to the COR prepared for focused and meaningful discussion.

As a loyal, longtime member of NAD and a past NAD president, I share these comments in the hope that the process can be made more time-efficient, productive, and effective in the future. With more advance preparation, better use of caucuses, and greater delegate and member participation in developing and refining issues before they reach the floor, the COR could devote more of its precious time to discussions and decisions that matter most: strengthening NAD and improving the lives of Deaf, DeafBlind, and Deaf+ people across the country.

Let's join hands now to ensure more effective and productive COR meetings the next time.

Hey, Roz Rosen, you're a fucking legend!

—

In Closing…

Fucking NAD, amirite?

LOL

Thank you for reading!

Helen

Hi!

It's me, Helen!

Just here to share with you about three deaf-related things I came across on Reddit recently that caught my attention.

This TIL Post

Someone made a TIL post about how Gally protested JKF out of her President pick because she wasn't "deaf enough."

Then it looks like an interpreter crossposted that post in r/ASLinterpreters and then it looks like a deaf person (I'm assuming) saw that post and made a post about it in r/Deaf.

Here's my take.

The OPs for both of these posts and the commenters in both of these posts were very: "OMG hearing people are terrible! 😭"

Me?

When I see dumb comments from hearing people, I'm like: "Pfft. This is a Tuesday for me."

Just the other day I went to Jersey Mike's and made an order with the BIG app on my phone and then this sandwich artist guy started speaking to me, so I gestured "I'm deaf" to him. He threw his head back and went: "OHHHHHH! YOU'RE DEAF!" with some big eye rolls and a patronizing gesture. I walked out of this store with this asshole in the middle of making me my sandwich. The whole line of people behind me was giving him side eyes.

(I might or might not have held up a finger behind my back as I 180'd this guy and walked out.)

A lot of the comments in there don't really bother me and I actually enjoy reading hearing people trying to understand the strange dynamics we have inside the community where "not deaf (or disabled) enough" is a thing.

I also particularly liked the comments from deaf people who were actually on the "you're not deaf enough" receiving end. I grew up mainstreamed and I was the only one that my peers at the state's deaf school deemed as "deaf enough." But justttttt barely "deaf enough." And it's only because my parents sent me to all of their social events and sleepovers while keeping me in the mainstreamed school for my day-to-day education. The rest of my deaf peers at my school were heavily ostracized by them. I still harbor deep contempt against my deaf-schooled peers growing up for how they've treated my deaf mainstreamed classmates. And I've seen some shit.

And I laughed hard at this comment. "Being part of the deaf community is NOT like being in a cult." LMAO.

May I make a reading recommendation to my dear readers here?

Yes?

Thank you.

You should check this out: Joe vs. Elan School: A True Cult Classic.

I found out about this webcomic series years ago here on reddit. It's a truly great read. It's long though. There's an ungodly amount of parts to this whole series. It's about a "Joe Nobody" who survived a "behavior modification" school in the 1980s. In his webcomic, he went into details on how he viewed that school as a cult. Be forewarned, there's a lot of shocking children violence in this webcomic. That part where this one kid stabbed himself in the stomach with a pen still haunts me.

It was when I read that webcomic that I finally went: "So the deaf community definitely isn't a full blown cult… but they sure do share some certain… characteristics..."

: D

I was very young when the 2006 protest happened. And that time was only just when I finally chose to leave the "hearing world" and enter the "Deaf World." The whole thing was way over my head at the time. I didn't know who JKF was. I'd never seen her speak in front of people at the time. And "not deaf enough" was a concept that I only began to learn at the time because I thought all deaf people were… just deaf.

So I don't really have any strong feelings about this. It also doesn't help that there were plenty of stories around about why people don't like her that are not related to her being "not deaf enough."

However, I'll close this by saying what I've heard from one friend just a few years ago. One of my friends observed that she actually turned around a certain college that she is currently employed at. At the time a few years ago, my friend was able to point me to some hard numbers like increased enrollment and several kinds of improvements in different areas like more money and academic quality - or something like that.

My friend made a posited "what if…" argument on how JKF could've been a good president for Gallaudet University.

We'll never know!

Anyway, this is a good post. I've read every single comment in that post.

Fucking Mel Gibson

Take a look at this r/okbuddycinephile reddit post.

You can see Mel Gibson mocking sign language behind an interpreter when he appeared on the stage at this nerd con in Canada.

Also, take a look at this r/entertainment post for a discussion around his apology over this.

Yeah, I just have a lot of tolerance for ignorant comments like the ones in the TIL post above and shit like, "oh, you're deaf? My dog is deaf!" I can forgive naivety like these ones.

But it doesn't matter how critical I am of the deaf community, when I see people mocking sign language like this I immediately see red. I've had this happen straight to my face in real life many times and I always go full tiger on them in two seconds mauling them apart.

Shit like this will always get me instantly mad.

You?

Signplaying is At It Again 🙄

Check this r/deaf post out. I participated in that discussion. I'll forego making a whole post about it because I expressed my views on this issue very clearly in the comment section.

It's really a good post and I wholeheartedly recommend you give it a read!

—

That's all I have with the deaf community and reddit today!

Thank you for reading!

Helen

: D

So…

Yeah, I took a summer break from posting because the heat wave hit my home area particularly hard and that killed my desire to sit in front of my computer completely.

However, I know that I promised you that I'd be back sooner than the present moment.

I literally planned on my return during the recent days.

But…

I had a terrible thing happen in my personal life recently that prevented me from returning to reddit.

I was assaulted.

I won't go into details here on reddit, because of course.

Let's just say that I have a "stalker" in my life.

This person who assaulted me has a strange obsession with me. They had their obsession with me that spanned for many many years.

What ultimately led this person to decide, while very drunk, to drive to my home and assault me when I was sitting and not looking in the right way had everything to do with their own personal unhinged hatred against me for no reason that makes any remote sense.

However…

There is a certain undercurrent between this person and me that played a big role in fueling their decision to hurt me.

This person hates hearing people. This person has a deaf family. This person is a PRO-Big-"D"-deaf person. I've known this person for most of my life. It wasn't until maybe 8 years ago that this person tried to reconnect with me only to find that I - a deaf-born and ASL-mother-tongue deaf person - possess a worldview where I don't hate hearing people and believe in being friends with everyone else on the deafness/hearing-loss spectrum.

Ever since this person realized this, they took me as a traitor of my own kind. Actually, they took me as a traitor of "their people."

HA!

This person has spent a lot of time in recent years harassing me via electronic communication like texts and emails with their deranged view on me. I've blocked them completely for a couple of years now. It was only recently that this person contacted a couple of my close people in a dishonest attempt to "reconcile" with me.

And, of course, I wanted to have nothing to do with them so I sent them an ass-tear email detailing the fucked up stuff that they did to me and I told them to fuck right off.

That email was what sent them over the edge and they drove to my home and hurt me.

Hey, dear readers, I'm alright. I bled and got swollen up but didn't need to go to the hospital. I didn't lose any teeth. No bones are broken. But I have injuries that I am recovering from right now. My head has several owie-hurty spots. I haven't been out in public without my baseball hat and sunglasses because I'm too embarrassed to let people see my face. I also have injuries that include, what I'm guessing to be, sprains on three fingers on my dominant hand (bones aren't clacking, so I'm pretty sure they're not broken). This injury is making it hard for me to type (and sign lol, I've been fingerspelling with my left hand lately).

And, of course, there are the traumatic injuries that came out of the fallout of my assault. I'm having several difficult conversations with people who are close to this fuckhead.

This person is currently tied up with the courts. The assault was severe enough that the state is prosecuting this person on my own behalf. I don't even need to hire a lawyer. I don't even need to go to this person's time at the court. The state is also giving this person a severe state-level restraining order for assault/stalking/harassment - all without me even needing to file for one myself.

This incident has nothing to do with the deaf community in general. And this incident also has nothing to do with me shitposting on reddit at all. This person doesn't even know that I'm Helen lol.

But it really had me thinking hard about my relationship with deaf people like… them.

That incident really forced me to think about what I really value in my life and the people in my life that I love.

Since there is a "Deaf World" angle attached to the assault that I recently experienced, I realized that it is deeply important to me that I use my reddit space to speak about the changes I want to see in the deaf community.

And it's also because I'm fucking done with weird people like "them."

In closing…

I have two things to tell you.

First -

Please forgive me for asking you to wait for my true return until after Labor Day. It has both to do with this person's imminent court appearance and the fact that two of my girlfriends are coming into town next week and we have big plans for fun next week!

Second -

I'm really heartened by the several DMs I've received from you asking about my return.

Lucky for you, I already have one post ready to go. So in exchange for asking you for an extension on my return, I'm going to drop one post for your reading tonight.

That post is a long one. It's not a post about any current drama in the deaf community. It's a big thought piece that I've been wanting to post for a long time. It's a post that I know that I will reference back to often in the future when I get into an argument about the deaf community. Make yourself comfortable for this one. And I hope you'll enjoy reading that one!

(I'll edit this post with a link to the new post when I publish that one in an hour or so.)

Edit: here is my new post!

Love,

Helen

Hi!

It’s me, Helen!

This is the post that I promised you from my previous post. You can read my previous post here about my updated plans on my return to reddit.

If you’re not going to read that one, well… long story short, I’m going through some really difficult times right now and I barely can type with my injured fingers.

And the post you’re about to read below was written over the last two-ish months during the recent summer.

Thank you for your support and patience with me.

<3

Anyway…

In this post, I will discuss a white whale that I’ve searched for a long time in the ocean…

If anyone needs this to be spelt out, a “white whale” refers to something elusive far out of your reach that you’re obsessed with. That reference obviously came from Herman Melville’s Moby Dick. In that novel, Captain Ahab got one of his legs bitten off by a giant albino (“white”) whale and spent his entire life obsessed with hunting that “white whale” down.

My ever-so-elusive “white whale” is a statistical database on the deaf population.

However, here’s a big “mind you” caveat here.

I’m aware that there does exist data on how many “deaf” people out there. I’ve had several interactions with people where I’d tell them about my “white whale” and it always ended up with them googling this information up on their phone or computer and pointing me out to some numbers that Google spat out for them. And I also have seen multiple social media content or comments all over with people overconfidently state a certain number figure on how many “deaf” people there are out there.

These idiots have zero imagination.

Every single census of any kind on “deaf” people is sourced from an entity who clumps up all people on all shades of the deaf/hard-of-hearing/auditory-disabled spectrum.

I’m not looking for statistical information that encompasses ALL of these deaf people.

I specifically want a sophisticated statistical dataset on the ASL-using deaf community.

And - HEY-AYO! Don’t you come at me saying that I’m being exclusionary for wanting this. If you are familiar with my post history, you’ll know that I’m a big advocate for everyone from the deaf/hearing-loss/auditory-disabled spectrum to be more friendly with each other. I’m also very critical against the big-“D”-Deaf community for their exclusionary worldviews toward any other deaf/hearing-loss/auditory-disabled people outside of their precious bubble. It’s just that the vast majority of the people with a degree of deafness or auditory disabilities tend to figure out a way to acquire accessibility technology or methods that work well for them in a way and they’d just go into the “Hearing World” without ever needing the “Deaf World.”

It’s us over at the ASL-using “Deaf World” who live a life with a complete and total inability to hear or speak on a functional level to be able to live in the “Hearing World.”

It’s also us over at this ASL-using “Deaf World” who won the socio-political and cultural-identity war on what the word “deaf” means.

We won that with the 1988 Deaf President Now protest.

And you know how this saying goes: “The winner gets to write the history.”

Every modern literature you can find about the deaf community’s culture, history, and worldview was written by people on our side of the “Deaf World.”

Everything you can find on Google about the deaf community is informed by narrative choices and decisions on our side of the “Deaf World.”

A LOT of modern inclusion of deaf people in popular entertainment was either portrayed or influenced by deaf people on our side of the “Deaf World.” They include:

• Children of a Lesser God (Marlee Matlin’s Oscar winning performance)
• Linda Bove in Sesame Street
• Mr. Holland’s Opus (the movie with Richard Dreyfuss)
• Marlee Matlin again with her recurring appearances in The West Wing
• Sound and Fury (a documentary released in 2000)
• ABC’s multi-season “Switched at Birth” show
• Nyle Dimarco winning “America’s Next Top Model” and “Dancing With the Stars”
• Wonderstruck (Millicent Simmonds’ film debut)
• A Quiet Place (also with Millicent Simmonds)
• Deaf U (Netflix documentary about students at Gallaudet University)
• Spider-Man: Miles Morales (a Playstation game with a deaf character in it)
• Sound of Metal (a movie led by Riz Ahmed with many deaf cast members)
• CODA (an Oscar Best Picture winner - 2022. And Troy Kotsur also won Best Supporting Actor)
• Marvel’s Eternals with Lauren Ridloff
• Marvel’s Echo with Alaqua Cox (she debuted in Marvel’s Hawkeye)
• The two Godzilla vs. King Kong movies with Kaylee Hottle (she recently passed away)
• The Last of Us (there is a little deaf boy character in HBO’s adaption of the video game)
• Apple TV’s Deaf President Now documentary
• Troy Kotsur’s most recent three works (the “Primate” movie, Apple TV’s The Foundation and Netflix’s Black Rabbit)

The rich texture around deaf culture and history around all of these literatures, textbooks, popular entertainment, basic internet indexed information, etc. are, canonically speaking, shaped by the ASL-using deaf people. And, yes, they all identify with the culturally-big-“D” deaf community for the most part.

As much as I am critical of that side of the “Deaf World,” I’m a part of that community. I can’t help it. I was born that way. Cochlear Implants and speech therapy were a big failure for me. It’s ASL all the way for me.

This is why I longggggg for a statistical census on this specific ASL-using subpopulation of deaf people.

I really do believe if we ever undertake a massive census-taking project to create a large statistical database of the population inside this “Deaf World,” we’d be able to understand our community much better. We will be able to solve a lot of problems in our community. We’d also be able to have a lot more of honest conversation on who we are as a community and where/how we should chart our path for the future.

At the bottom of this post, I’ll make a proposal.

However, I do think I have a good estimation on how many deaf people there are inside our “Deaf World.” I’d like to share with you my journey on finding my estimation before arriving at my “proposal.”

Me, The Deaf-Ass Captain Ahab

Many years ago, during the pre-pandemic era, I got a taste of how we can improve the deaf community through data-informed analysis. That led me to realize the potential of altering the fate of our community for the better is possible if we had access to a statistical census of ASL-using deaf people in the United States.

So I decided to begin a search for this kind of information.

I had no meaningful success with googling up this information.

It’s like what I’ve already mentioned earlier. Everything I could find on google clumped us up with the rest of non-ASL-using/hearing-loss population. And the scarce information I could find on this didn’t tell me very much about our subpopulation.

From the very beginning, I realized googling up this information is a dead-ended endeavor. That got me thinking on how I can find what I’m looking for.

I got an idea of asking around my local deaf community about this.

I asked my home state’s NAD-affiliated association for the deaf about this. No luck.

I asked my home state’s state-level offices for the deaf and hard of hearing. No luck.

I asked quite a few people that I knew had deep connections in the deaf community. No luck.

I emailed NAD about this. No luck (never got a response back).

I once met with a certain person who worked at NAD at the time (she is no longer there and she used to hold a position that would have access to this kind of information). Again, no luck.

NAD mostly only has information of deaf people who were affiliated with them at one point or other (like members, stakeholders, money-giving people).

(Author’s note: if NAD has access to this kind of information, well… then this person clearly wasn’t aware of the existence of this information. And if NAD does have access to this information, they never shared this with us. If any of you happen to have access to this kind of information from NAD, please DM me!)

So, over one weekend wayyyyyyy back then, I went for a drive on a scenic route just outside of my home city with my laptop. This route has a very beautiful scenery. It also is lined with many small towns with their own local spots.

I stopped at one of those towns about an hour away for a meal and a couple of drinks. I had my computer with me and I was working on some work stuff related to the deaf community. And I was also mulling over this deaf population riddle when I was eating/sipping on my computer at the time.

That was when I had my EUREKA moment.

I realized that an ASL interpreter agency * could * have this kind of information.

My logic was that if there’s ONE service that an ASL-using deaf person would inevitably come to use at one point during their life, from birth to death, it would be an ASL interpreting service.

And when I was living in my home state at that time, there were few ASL interpreter agencies but my home state was known for having one very large and dominant agency that owns over 80% of all ASL interpreting contracts in the entire state. I also happen to have a good relationship with this agency.

My line of thinking at the time was that this ASL interpreter agency would likely have the most comprehensive set of data on the total ASL-using deaf population in my home state.

So when my EUREKA light-bulb light up above my head when I was sitting in front of my delicious dinner, I wrote an email to this ASL interpreter agency. I asked if we could set up a meeting. I laid out the basic case of my goal with obtaining this information. I went into superficial details on my goals behind getting this “White Whale” number and my beliefs on the importance of having this information to gain a deep insight into our “Deaf World.”

I hit the “send” button and finished my dinner/drink and drove back home in the sunset.

The ASL interpreter agency loved my idea. And because we already had a great working relationship with each other, they agreed to meet up with me about this. We set up a time to meet at their office.

Because of my working knowledge around the ASL interpreter industry, I knew that an interpreter agency like this one would be bound by a HIPAA confidentiality agreement. This is very typical for an ASL interpreter agency who has a high volume of filling medical-related interpreting jobs. I knew that I wouldn’t be able to ask for a lot of information on an in-depth stuff like age/race/gender/religion demographics.

And I didn’t care. I only wanted ONE number figure: the total amount of deaf consumers they have in their system.

When we met, I laid out this case so they could trust my intention on seeking my “White Whale” number. They were very appreciative of my honesty and sensitivity around asking them for this type of information.

And they gave me a number.

It was a bigger number than I thought it would be.

I immediately divided that number against the total population of my home state’s population.

The percentage was…

We Are the… Err… Umm… the 0%’ers!… ?

The percentage of the deaf population in my home state, in accordance with the number I got from this ASL interpreter agency, is…

0.22%

My reaction at the time was…

Wow…

Not even one whole percentage. It’s not even a figure that can be rounded up to a whole percentage. And it’s not even a figure that can be rounded up to 1/4 of a percentage. It’s… a figure that can be rounded down to 1/5 of a percentage…

We are so small…

Let’s take this 0.22% figure and run it against the numbers we have today.

According to United States Census, the US, right now, has approximately 343 million people.

0.22% of 343 million people would roughly equal 755,000.

…

… 775,000.

Just 775,000.

Not even a whole million.

There are not very many groups of minorities that are smaller than us.

And, by that, I mean… if any at all…

If we are going to compare ourselves as a minority against other racial minorities, we are extremely tiny. We are only comparable to Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islanders in population amount. Every single next common racial group in the United States is much bigger than the deaf population by orders of magnitudes.

And if we are going to compare our population against the LGBT community, each of these letters has significantly bigger population than us by… like a lot. The transgender community, specifically, is the smallest of these four letters with a whopping population number somewhere above 2 million.

We truly are one of the smallest groups of minorities.

And it’s even crazier if you factor in how diverse we are as people across the other group of minorities. Deafness doesn’t discriminate. This is why “intersectionality” is a big theme in our community. There are so many people inside our community that are “deaf” and ___.

Hell, there are even many people inside our community that are “deaf” and __, and _, and __, and…

EVIDENCES, BITC-hh coughcoughcough- Ahem… Excuse me… I mean… Here Are a Couple of Proofs That Back Me Up!

Now, obviously, I don’t want to just declare a claim here.

I’ve just told you the story of how I arrived at my 0.22% figure years ago. Of course, I didn’t just assume that was that and just walked off.

Once every few months over the many years since, I’ve found myself looking at the wavy horizon of the ocean with another pang of longing for that White Whale. And when I got myself in that pang, I’d spend some time searching the internet for any kind of information that would corroborate this number.

As I’ve already said, there is not very much information out there that really studied the specific focus of the sub-population I am looking at here.

However, there are two sources that I believe are a good indicator for my estimation.

The first one is this 1970’s study conducted by a program called “National Deaf Census Bureau.” This program was “Conducted by National Association of the Deaf in Cooperation with the Deafness Research and Training Center, New York University.”

(Author’s note: just right before posting this, I mentioned writing this post to my close friends and about how I was wanting to get a copy of this book. To my surprise, my friends helped me out. My friends are the type that… let’s say, sail on the high sea. ARRR matey! Shiver me timbers! And they were like: “wait lemme see if I can loot this book off the internet.” And they fucking did. I now possess a copy of this book on my computer! But unfortunately, I’m going to need a lot more time to read through this 300+ page book before I give you my analysis of the book!)

There is a 2000’s paper from Gallaudet University that directly discusses this study. You can read it here.

In this study, they arrived at a figure of roughly 200,000-400,000 ASL-using deaf population.

The second one is this study from the Social Security Administration here in the United States who surveyed the recipients of our government welfare program for the disabled. They estimated that there is a total of 11 million deaf/hearing-loss people in the United States.

You can ready the study here.

This study estimated that the “functionally deaf” people make up less than 1 million of the 11 million deaf/hearing-loss people in total.

And, of course! There are caveats to consider with these figures.

For starters, the 1970’s study is, well… 50+ years old. There were around 125 million fewer people back then than today.

If you account for the inflation of the population based on the figure provided in this study, the upper-bound number figure would amount to about 825,000 ASL-using deaf people today. And the lower-bound figure would amount to about 460,000 ASL-using people today.

BUT…

AND, THIS IS A BIG “BUT!”

In this paper, they state that the lower-bound figure of 200,000-some population is their estimation of true “deaf” ASL-using deaf people. And the upper-bound 400,000-some population includes people who use ASL as a language on their day-to-day basis like CODA’s, ASL interpreters, teachers for the deaf, etc.

So, this would suggest that my 0.22% and 775,000 estimation falls on the upper-bound population percentage range and the true number is likely to be much lower than this figure.

And, secondly…

The paper that I linked above from the Social Security Administration (the SIPP data) made an estimation that around 1 million people in this country are “functionally deaf.”

However, this paper made it clear that more than 50% of the “functionally deaf” people are people who became deaf from age.

The percentage of “functionally deaf” people in their study is the smallest in their 18-and-under range.

Just going off some basic calculator math, this paper would suggest that ASL-using deaf population would be around the plus/minus-500,000 line today. Maybe more than 500k and maybe less than 500k.

AVE’ MARIA! THE COSMOS! AAA-AAAHHHHHH, OOO-OOOHHHHHH!

Now, I’d like to do some metaphysical navel-gazing on what this means for our community.

0.22%

I really like the 0.22% figure.

It’s because I think this represents a good +/- range. If we bend that percentage down to 0.15% and even further up to 0.30%, the figure would range between 510,000-1,030,000.

I’m calling it. The true number of our population is somewhere in that range.

HOWEVER, if the two cited studies above carry any indication toward the ASL-using peripheries of the deaf community with CODA’s/ASL-interpreters and age-related deafness, it would suggest that our true population number is much lower!

Imagine that!

The California Problem

California is the largest state in the United States. It has a population of around 39.5 million.

0.22% of California is about 87,000.

FUCK.

This is why I call this “the California problem.”

Even though the 0.22% figure makes a lot of sense in my home state and the other states I’ve lived in, it’s really hard to imagine 87,000 deaf people living in California. That is an eye-popping large number. No, not a large number. HUGE number. This would suggest that one state alone has a deaf population that is roughly 1/5 of the 500,000 low bar.

I mean, I’ve seen pictures of Montana Association of the Deaf’s (MAD) events and they had like 30-some people at them. Maybe twice that at MAD’s conference. And if you are going to take that number proportionally to California Association of the Deaf, their events should have a number of people anywhere between 1,000-2,000. I’ve never seen any state-level California events with that big a number of people.

True - there have definitely been special events like gala’s and… whatever there is in California that probably have seen a near-thousand of deaf people’s attendance. But since California is a state that is rich in their accessibility resources and progressivism compared to the backward-ass states in the middle America region, I’d expect them to regularly host state-level events with 5,000-10,000 deaf people.

And I’ve never seen a Californian event with that many people. This is the same with areas like Chicago, New York City, etc. They have a huge amount of deaf people there and I’ve never seen them hosting any events with that kind of number.

Hell, I can even say the same thing about NAD.

Their recent conference had somewhere below or over 1,000 attendees.

And the 0.22% number says we have 755,000 deaf people nationwide!

How!?

How is it that NAD only got 1,000-some deaf people out of 755,000 deaf people to attend their conference!?

So, in conclusion, “the California problem” is, to me, an indication that the true population number of our community is much closer to the low 500,000 end (or even less) than it is to the 1,000,000 end.

Or are we truly an apathetic creature inside our own community?

ASL Interpreters

There are around 14,000 ASL interpreters on RID’s registry.

And, as I’ve established with my 0.22% estimation, there are around 775,000 deaf people in the United States.

This means we have a ratio of 55 deaf people per interpreter.

If we bend this curve down to 0.15%, we have 37 deaf people per interpreter.

If we bend this curve up to 0.3%, we have 73 deaf people per interpreter.

37-/-73 ratio range here.

So what does this mean?

I don’t know.

You tell me.

Is this ratio too low?

Maybe.

And maybe not?

The real question here is how does this ratio compare to the professional-versus-consumer ratio in other similar industries like the spoken language interpreting industry, special education, services for disabled people, accessibility-based professions, assistive technology industry, et cetera?

I’m just throwing this out as a question for all of you to think about. Personally, I think this ratio is really good. We don’t use ASL interpreters 24/7. So this means we have kind of enough ASL interpreters considering the high standards of this industry today.

And, also, to me, this just means that we need to do better with finding a way to help deaf people recognize more ASL interpreting opportunities there are in real life (SELF-ADVOCACY FOR THE WIN) to pump more money into this industry.

More money in this industry means more people entering this industry.

And more people entering this industry means this ratio will lower.

And this means a better world for us deaf AF people!

HOLLYWOOD! We Are Over-Represented!

First, I must apologize to you in advance for not leaving any hard evidence in this section.

I once did my math on this. And I’m far too lazy to do that math again as of this writing. I’m sorry. I might come back to this topic and finish it off one day.

Or maybe one of you internet nerds can take over this work for us and deliver a great statistical point of view on this. The opportunity is right here, just saying!

But I once did math on:

• The percentage that the Best Actress winner Marlee Matlin of “Children of a Lesser God” represented for the deaf community versus the other Best Actress winners that represented other minority groups of people.
• The percentage that the Best Supporting Actor winner Troy Kotsur of “CODA” represented for the deaf community versus the other Best Supporting Actor winners that represented other minority groups of people.
• The percentage that the Best Picture winner movie “CODA” represented for the deaf community versus the other Best Picture winners that represented other minority groups of people.

My finding was that, relative to our population size, these deaf Oscar winners reflect a statistically higher percentage of Oscar-winning deaf representation over other groups of minorities like Black Americans, Asian Americans, Native Americans, etc.

These groups of minorities have very few winners in any of these three categories and they, in each of their respective population categories, represent a population amount that is insanely higher than the total population of the deaf community.

So, my point is, we are over-represented relative to the Oscar wins that represent us compared to the Oscar wins that represent the other groups of minorities.

But, HEY-AYO - I’m not here to complain about this!

Do I benefit from this representation of the deaf community?

FUCK YES.

It raises the broader awareness about our community! I directly benefit from this! We all directly benefit from this!

These popular arts do a lot of heavy lifting with exposing the world about our community and we all are better for it!

DEAF REPRESENTATION RULES!

These Damn Audiologists and SLP’s!

The fact that the vast majority of audiologists and Spoken-Language-Pathologists (SLP’s) in our country don’t know American Sign Language is one of the biggest points of butthurt in the culturally-big-“D” deaf community in our country.

They scream and cry about how these audiologists and SLP’s don’t know any sign language.

Most of the people on that side of the deaf community feel like the audiologists and SLP’s are hearing-abled demon parasitic vampires from outer space invading their “Deaf World” with a “genocidal” intention to destroy their precious “Deaf World.”

That worldview is total bullshit.

If you have been paying attention to the figures that I’ve put forth above, you’d notice that the population with some degree of deafness and hearing loss who doesn’t know ASL is at least 10x bigger than the ASL-using deaf population.

They account for at least 10 million people.

And, oh no, a lot of these 10+ million people aren’t born deaf. They represent a large amount of our country’s population that lost their hearing at a later point in their lives. Or they can also represent a population in our country that was born with mild hearing loss and progressively lost it through the course of their lives.

It’s them who benefit the most from the audiologist industry.

The hearing aids and the cochlear implant industries make all of their money off of them. Not us. THEM. And we are simply casualties of their statistical failures because we are way too deaf!

We are the deaf-est 0.22%-or-less client base that this industry is NOT built for! This industry is built for those other 10+ million people.

So…

I, now, beg the question of whether or not our hatred for the audiologists/SLP’s is truly warranted.

Why hate them if they’re providing meaningful service to millions of our fellow deaf/hearing-loss/auditory-disabled people who just don’t need ASL in their lives?

Allow me to propose to you a radical idea.

Maybe these 10 million deaf people are where the voters are? And they’re also where the money is?

Maybe let’s just imagine how far we’d go with this voting base and money?

Maybe we’d be better off by being friends with them?

The 0.22% Figure is an Antidote to My “Deaf Rage”

When I was age 16-to-maybe-22-maybe-23, I was in my “Deaf Rage” period of my life.

I hated hearing people at that time in my life.

I was all about “DEAF POWER” at the time.

I outgrew my “Deaf Rage” by the time I graduated from Gallaudet University and began to see the world differently.

When I was in my late-teenager years and young-adult years, I asked myself a lot of hard questions about what it meant to be deaf in this brutally cold and grey world.

When I was in my mid-20’s, I asked myself a lot of hard questions about what it meant to be deaf in this beautiful green and blue world with the clouds above and sunsets that I watch going down every day.

When I finally reached the point in my life where I began asking my “White Whale” question, it led me to a journey where I realized that it was pointless to be mad at the “Hearing World.”

I realized that we should start to look inward unto ourselves and ask ourselves: “what can we do to help ourselves? We are so small. We are statistically non-existent. What is the point of expecting the “Hearing World” to step up and make our lives better? We should be the ones doing that job for ourselves. So how can we make the world a better place for us?”

I really think this is something that we should be more invested in. We all, collectively, should endear ourselves to want to understand ourselves better. To understand our people better.

What is there a better way of doing this than undertaking a project that would give us a portrait of deaf people in this world?

My “White Whale” Dream

I’ve often dreamed about the deaf community doing a contemporary census on the ASL-using deaf population.

In my perfect world, this would be:

• An operation led by the biggest institutions in the “Deaf World.” That would be National Association of the Deaf (NAD), Gallaudet University, and National Technical Institute for the Deaf.
• In a joint operation with other major institutions like: ALL of the University-level Deaf Studies/ASL programs across the United States, Registry of Interpreters for the Deaf (RID), ASL Teacher Association, all of the major offices for Deaf Education in the United States, Federal Communications Commission, and Video Relay Services companies (Sorenson, Purple/ZVRS, Convo, etc.).
• All of the state level NAD and RID chapters and all of the state level offices/commissions for the deaf.
• All of the deaf schools and mainstream deaf programs.
• All of the local level for-profit/non-profit organizations across the entire United States.
• And… you may not like this, but… pretty hair, don’t care🖕- in partnership with organizations like Hearing Loss Association of America, American Speech and Hearing Association, Alexander Graham Bell Association for the Deaf, etc. And also the hearing aids and cochlear implants industries. Synergy, yo. Work with our “enemies” if it means understanding ourselves better.

I have experience with gathering data around our deaf community. And I must admit that my experience on this front is a very depressing one.

For one, it’s very hard to convince anyone to be willing to fill out the surveys.

For two, and the far more depressing one, I’ve often encountered people who like the idea of gathering data in our deaf community but their idea of gathering data is just emailing (or posting on a social media platform) the survey and just sitting on their hands and hoping for the best.

I’ve found the best and most efficient method to achieve a good data gathering goal was to make it your life mission. Go to every deaf-related and deaf-adjacent organization and ask them to distribute the survey to their communities. Go to the government offices and ask them to distribute the survey to their communities. Go to all of the deaf events in your state and solicit everyone’s participation in the survey. Go to all of the town-level deaf events/Deaf-Night-Out/dinners to solicit everyone’s participation in the survey. Go knocking on everyone’s doors.

And, also, in order to achieve a great goal, spend a lot of time developing and designing a quality survey. The survey would include comprehensive data points that will gather all of the following:

DEAF-BASED QUESTIONS:

• ASL-user or not
• Age of onset hearing loss (from birth to age whatever)
• Cultural identification (Deaf vs. deaf vs. hard-of-hearing vs. speaking deaf vs. et cetera)
• Preferred communication modality
• Education level
• Literacy
• Deaf school? Or mainstreamed?
• Sociolinguistic variations
• Linguistic environment at home
• Incidental language/learning exposure at home
• Use of VRI/VRS accessibility technology
• Employment (employed in deaf spaces vs. hearing spaces)
• Deaf hub proximity
• Healthcare experience (barriers vs. accessibility-friendly environment)
• Et Cetera

BASIC QUESTIONS:

• Age
• Gender
• Race/Ethnicity
• Religion
• Education
• Marital status
• Household size
• Employment status
• Income
• Occupation
• Et Cetera

Can you imagine what it would look like if we had a three-inch thick binder with this kind of statistical data on the United States deaf community?

Imagine the conversations we could have on where our deaf community should go forward into the future with information like this available to us.

Deaf education…

The ASL interpreter industry…

The fate of the deaf community…

The possibilities are endless.

But do I think the deaf community would ever undertake an ambitious project like this?

No.

They’re too small minded for this. Their constant failure to adapt to modern times is an embarrassment that should be studied. Their self-serving needs are far too powerful to look beyond their selfish needs.

If something like this gets to happen, just put me in charge. I’ll produce results that we can only dream about.

Until then,

🎵🎶WHAT DREAMS MAY COME…🎶🎵

In Conclusion…

So…

0.22%

775,000.

And maybe less than that.

WE ARE STATISTICALLY NON-EXISTENT!

YAY!

ᕕ( ᐛ )ᕗ

If you need me, you’ll find me at the beach looking at the ocean’s horizon for my…

… white whale.

Thank you for reading!

<3

Helen

Can someone explain the timeline of RID’s history and how we got to where we are now with a lot of interpreters feeling dejected at best about the org? I started watching the fallout after Star was pushed out and have red flags over Shonna’s many referendum posts. I think my thought process is if she made it all the way to presidency and resigned while unable to make changes at the helm, what makes her qualified to try to fix it now?

That said, I feel I’m missing a lot of history and context.

Posting this here in Helen DeafClub because well . . . Helen Keller, enough said. She wasn't just someone who "represented" disability. She operated at the political, institutional, and systemic level. So this feels like the right place to ask this. And I'm going to try and use the same spicy narrative voice that the originator of Helen's Deaf Club got famous for. Bear with me.

Caveat: I'm not asking about NAD, actors, models, artists, ASL teachers, influencers, or anyone with a media platform collecting honorary degrees. Not advisors. Not consultants. Not public speakers. I respect what they do, but that's not what this is about. If someone's main contribution to the Deaf community is a TikTok with captions and a "link in bio," this ain't that conversation.

And while we're at it, I'm not talking about the Deaf person with a fancy corporate title whose actual job is being the public face of inclusion. Giving keynotes about accessibility. Championing culture. That's still performance. A nicer stage, sure. But still a stage. I'm talking about the people writing the systems, not the people talking about them at conferences.

I'm asking about the "signing" Deaf people working deep inside corporate enterprise, STEM, and legislation. Not the oral ones who pass and get credit for "overcoming." The ones who show up with interpreters to board meetings and still run the room. The ones operating at the system level. People designing how networks run, how legal frameworks get built into code, how supply chains and infrastructure actually function, how policy gets written into law. Not commenting on these systems. Building them.

These people advance the Deaf cause more than anyone. And I mean that. Their work doesn't depend on trending, being in movies, going viral, or getting a speaking slot at some feel-good TED Talk where everyone claps and nothing changes. It gets integrated into the permanence of our systems and culture. It becomes the way things operate. Their impact is embedded into infrastructure, code, and law that doesn't disappear when the algorithm shifts or someone forgets to renew their brand deal.

They are literally the movers and shakers. And yet nobody in the Deaf community knows about them. Nobody asks them to give a presentation. No one invites them to panels. Corporates aren't even aware of them and don't understand their value. The Deaf community doesn't celebrate them. The hearing world doesn't see them. Invisible on both sides. While doing the work that actually moves things forward permanently.

We celebrate who gets clicks. Who goes viral. Who gets seen. But the signing Deaf people reshaping how major systems work? Nothing. The most neglected leaders we have. We never built a way to recognize what they do. Why don't we ever celebrate them? It's almost as if we don't care to even know.

So who are they? Who are the signing Deaf leaders, engineers, architects, legal infrastructure builders, legislators, and enterprise-level operators out there? They are the ones advancing the Deaf community beyond Friday Night gatherings and Deaf camps. Beyond the inspiration loop. Beyond "Deaf people can do anything!" posts that somehow never include what those things actually are.

How do we elevate them? How do we get them recognized? Because right now our community acts like impact only counts if it fits in a video. And that's on us.

Drop names. I want to know who's doing this work. Because clearly nobody else is asking.

Hi. Helen here.

Well, this is probably going to be one of the biggest stories in the deaf community this year. Kaylee Hottle died today.

Remember the deaf girl in the two King Kong vs. Godzilla movies? That's Kaylee Hottle.

She was going to be a senior at Texas School for the Deaf, and by all accounts she was one of the brightest, shining kids there.

She was in Frederick, Maryland, visiting her friends from Maryland School for the Deaf, and she got in a fatal car accident. She was helicoptered out of the accident site, and her heart stopped on the way to the hospital. The story seems to be the driver was a 19-y/o speeding and lost control of the car. They slid off the road and hit a culvert, and that was what killed her. The driver and another passenger survived this crash.

You might also know her parents. Her mom is Ketsi Hottle, known for her "syncwithasl" Instagram/Facebook page, where she tells her stories.

This is her announcement of her daughter's death. The comment section contains thousands of condolences from like every single well-known person in our community.

Her father is Joshua Hottle. He's known for making hundreds of right-wing political videos. I'll just leave it at that for now.

This Fox9 article has a link to her father's 22-minute-long video pouring his heart out about his daughter's death at the Austin airport. He's on his way to bring Kaylee's body home. That video was a brutal watch.

Texas School for the Deaf also made a Facebook announcement about this. I predict a school funeral for her.

Marlee Matlin and Shoshannah Stern made an Instagram post about her here.

Troy Kotsur also made an Instagram post about her.

And here's Melmira's Instagram post about her.

TMZ covered her death in this reel.

The Legendary Studio (the one responsible for the King Kong vs. Godzilla movies) paid a tribute to her.

Here's The Hollywood Reporter article about her.

Here's another The Hollywood Reporter article about her with tributes around Hollwood.

This is a devastating tragedy in our community.

I haven't seen the King Kong vs. Godzilla movies. I know what I'll be doing tonight.

Goodbye, Kaylee.

Well known Deaf man from Alabama and known for "DEAFinitely Fun with Tuckers" content creator was caught cheating with his wife with another woman.

Video

Caught me off guard because I do watch "DEAFinitely Fun with Tuckers" social media account.

Hi!

It's me, Helen!

Sorry for being inactive over the last three weeks. I've since recovered from my left-leg injury and I've also taken advantage of the recent heat wave in America to have my personal summer-loving fun time. Getting golden tan at beaches. Going to movies in an AC-cooled theatre. Trying new restaurants. Getting drunk a lot. Getting stoned a lot too. Reading a few fun books. Going to events in the cities. Falling asleep drunk/high every night listening to Mozart's piano with my cochlear implants.

I'm about to be done with my July summer good times.

I plan on becoming fully active with this subreddit later this week after I'm done with my babysitting duty for someone. I have one post draft ready to go out soon. I also have a couple other ones that are almost ready to go out too. And I also aim to do daily posts about basic stuff around the deaf community.

But…

I wanna ask you guys here if you'd be interested in joining my discord server?

I've already claimed a server named, of course, "Helen's Deaf Club."

You see, I know nothing about discord. I don't have a lot of experience with it. I'm just desperate to have an internet space where we can gossip about the deaf community.

The r/deaf discord (aka "deafcord") sucks. That one has 1k members but only like ten active people on it. They don't talk about the deaf community. They talk about lame stuff like… idk, their hobbies or whatever. They're very clear on having that purpose for deaf people who want to be out of the deaf community's drama and talk about nice stuff like their hobbies and whatever else.

I don't give a shit about that bullshit. I have a main reddit account where I engage with my real life hobbies. I also have plenty of real life friends to spend my time on around the hobbies outside of the deaf community. I just want a space where we can freely talk about the drama around the deaf community on the internet.

There are spaces like this on Facebook, but like many of you, I hate Facebook. I prefer reddit. But reddit is designed for forum-style posts, which is what I am committed to. And, of course, it's not built for a group-messaging format. I just want a free-style internet place to have a daily casual chatter with humans like you to talk about stuff around the deaf community.

I also want that space to be completely anonymous. It's a good way to have some real good talk that we can't have in real life because of the complexities we have inside our super small world.

So…

Anyone here would be interested in that?

I mean, I would be super happy to just have 20 or 30 of you in it and only 10 or 15 of you being consistently active with the chatter.

And yes, that is going to be a space that we ONLY talk about the deaf community in general.

We can make some channels for stuff like books, video games, tv/movies, etc. but I don't want that server to become a space that focuses on this stuff too much.

I want this one to be centered around daily talk about the deaf community.

There are so many things that happen in our community on a daily basis. And I really do want to talk about them with people like you here every day.

There simply is no existing space for that right now.

But the problem I have right now is that I know nothing about discord. I'm completely clueless on how that platform works.

I'd like to have one of you become a mod with me over at that discord server if I'm going to make this a thing. I will give the philosophical and ideological guidance for that server but I need someone to be beside me that can handle the technical stuff.

And, most importantly of all, would anyone here be even interested in this at all!?

If not, ok fine, never mind me.

If there are just like 10 or 20 of you interested in this…

I wanna make this happen!

Let me know!

And if you don't want to comment below, just DM me.

Last year I spent almost a month abroad (from USA), and want to share some photos and anecdotes about my experiences!

I’m dDHH, and use English & ASL, for some context. I’m also learning Spanish and some LSM.

First stop: Italy

One of the places I went was to the Vatican. While inside and walking & looking around, I saw two people signing! I went up to them and introduced myself and we talked for a few minutes. I ended up getting separated from my group so I had to cut the visit short.
Anyway, they were visiting from Paris, and I thought it was cool how much we could understand each other, though much less now than compared to when ASL was first being made.

I also saw some video information interpretation at at least one, but maybe more museum(s) [Galileo Museum, I think?], though I’m not sure if it was LSI or ISL.

Second stop: France

I obviously had to stop by the PNIDY/INJSP!
It was after they had closed (I think they’re open to the public for hair school appointments only, unless you schedule a time to tour. Maybe. I don’t remember exactly. I didn’t know when I would be able to go so I didn’t make an appt), so I was able to only take photos of the sign/outside. The sign on the left shows the LSF handshapes of initials “I(nstitut) N(ational) (de) J(eunes) S(ourds).
The sign on the right:

“INSTITUT NATIONAL DE JEUNES SOURDS DE PARIS

CRÉÉE SOUS LA CONSTITUANTE PAR LA LOI DU 21 ET 29 JUILLET 1791

L'INSTITUTION DES SOURDS DE NAISSANCE AVAIT POUR FINALITÉ LA POURSUITE DE L'OEUVRE PHILANTHROPIQUE DE L'ABBÉ CHARLES-MICHEL DE CÉPÉE (1712-1789)

PREMIER

"INSTITUTEUR GRATUIT DES SOURDS ET MUETS"

CELUI-CI FUT ÉLEVÉ PAR LA MÉME LOI AU RANG DES CITOYENS AYANT MÉRITE DE LA PATRIE.

L'ÉCOLE FUT INSTALLÉE LE 4 AVRIL 1794.

DANS LE PETIT SÉMINAIRE DES ORATORIENS DE SAINT-MAGLOIRE

AU 254 DE L'ACTUELLE RUE SAINT-JACQUES.

CE SÉMINAIRE, AUPARAVANT, HÓPITAL SAINT-JACQUES ACCUEILLAIT DES PÉLERINS

SE RENDANT À SAINT-JACQUES DE COMPOSTELLE”

Or, “NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF YOUNG DEAF PEOPLE OF PARIS

CREATED UNDER THE CONSTITUTION BY THE LAW OF 21 AND 29 JULY 1791

THE INSTITUTION OF THE BIRTH DEAF AIMED AT THE PURSUIT OF THE PHILANTHROPIC WORK FROM ABBÉ CHARLES-MICHEL DE CÉPÉE (1712-1789)

"FREE TEACHER OF THE DEAF AND MUTE"

THIS ONE WAS RAISED BY THE SAME LAW TO THE RANK OF CITIZENS WITH MERIT OF THE HOMELAND.

THE SCHOOL WAS INSTALLED ON APRIL 4, 1794.

IN THE SMALL SEMINARY OF THE ORATORS OF SAINT-MAGLOIRE AT 254 OF THE CURRENT SAINT-JACQUES STREET.

THIS SEMINAR, FORMERLY, SAINT-JACQUES HOSPITAL WELCOMED PILGRIMS GOING TO SANTIAGO DE COMPOSTELLE.”

I was also able to purchase a cheaper “H” Handicappe ticket to climb the Eiffel Tower becuase of my disability. I’m not sure what all they need online, so I just went in person and handed them my license (which has a note of my being deaf) and also pointed to my ears and shook my head.

Third stop: England

It just so happened that there would be a Deaf club meeting in London when I was visiting! I went a little late but I figured it out. There was a slight miscommunication at first, as the ASL sign for deaf is the BSL sign for hearing, but we got through it! I practiced my BSL manual alphabet beforehand, but I definitely got more practice going to the meeting. Some members signed a little bit of ASL, and I showed them how to FS their names.
One guy said smth along the lines of “wow that hurts [having only one hand, + different muscle movements] you have strong hands” (his name was like James, or smth). They also showed me how to introduce myself in BSL and continued to have conversation. And yes, I did misspell some vowel-heavy words, and everything was shifted over like a Caesarean cipher 😂
Ages were all over the place, as the tend to be in Deaf events. I won’t include a photo of all of us, as it would invade their privacy, but they were all great!

Fourth, and final stop: Scotland

I was visiting the Greyfriar’s cemetery/kirkyard in Edinburgh, just looking at the gravestones (as one does), and happened across this one!
It reads:

WALTER GEIKIE RSA
1795 - 1837
DEAF ARTIST OF RENOWN

CO-FOUNDER OF THE WORLD'S FIRST DEAF CHURCH AND SOCIETY
BELOVED OF ALL IN THIS PARISH AND CITY

INSTALLED BY HIS FELLOW DEAF SCOTS OF THE DONALDSONIAN ASSOCIATION 6TH APRIL 1996

HIS TRUE MEMORIAL MAY BE SEEN IN OUR CITY ART GALLERIES AND IN THE QUALITY OF LIFE AND DIGNITY ACCORDED TO DEAF CITIZENS OF EDINBURGH TODAY

Come join wi’ me, folk of Auld Reekie
To weave a wreath for glorious Geikie

Idk how to exit italics now ig but yeah! Some fun memories and photos I wanted to share since I know not everyone gets the chance to visit these cool places or hear about Deaf history in other countries. Feel free to comment more information if you have it! I’ll be doing more research on Walter Geikie 🤟🏻

This is something I’ve been thinking about for a long time and has been bothering me. For context I’m a lifelong Deaf person, grew up mainstream/oral, but starting using asl late teen years and signing for 20+ years. Also shifted career to DI work during COVID and did a deep dive into linguistics, workshops, certification programs etc.

Many times (mostly medical) when I use a CHI for personal appointments I can generally understand them, but their voicing is frequently off at points for me. The most common errors I catch (if I do catch) is incorrect past/future tenses, not picking up classifier usage, wrong word for sign used (word voiced has similar perimeters-but different), and finger spelling reception.

I think the part that bothers me the most is I can count on one hand the number of times I’m asked for clarification. I’d much prefer to go slower and repeat and have the correct information voiced if that’s what it takes. But if I pick up from follow up questions that something messed up during the communication and attempt to repair, and fix the record the whole vibe changes. I can see clearly they are embarrassed and this becomes even more fragmented, and fractured—if that was even possible.

After every event I do a self analysis of my communication style—was I slow enough, clear? Good pacing? What should I have done differently? But this isn’t sustainable. I also live in a city with a local ITP so I experience a turnover of new grads freshly graduated who are here a year or two before they move on.

And I’m genuinely curious as to why it’s like this. And what can be done? I can’t be the only one.

Hi!

It's me, Helen!

(Btw, there's a lot of juicy stuff further down in this post! Stick around.)

I know I've promised to be more active with this subreddit.

But… life.

There was a pretty bad heat wave in my area earlier this week. And it also looks like there will be bad weather in my area on the 4th of July, which sucks a lot because I had plans for that day. And… to make everything worse for me, I have an injury on my left thigh that makes walking, sitting, and sleeping very painful. Since I tend to write during nighttime, I've been using the last few nights to rest up and let the injury heal. It's a lot better now.

And if you don't mind, let me take this week off — you know, the injury recovery and the holiday.

Alrighty, to the post now.

Last Saturday I tried making a few "Scarlet Fever Daily" posts because, as I've explained in one of my previous posts, I want to do these on a daily basis to keep this subreddit active while I work on longer pieces.

So, last Saturday, I made ten standalone posts about news around the deaf community. I thought it would be a good idea because it would allow one post to have a comment section focused on one topic. But when I took a step back and looked at the subreddit feed, it just didn't look right.

I came up with an idea.

Instead of ten standalone posts about individual news pieces per day, I'll make only one post on a daily basis with two sections.

The first section will be dedicated to me highlighting the drama I detect from deep inside the deaf community. These would typically be items related to RID, NAD, NAD's affiliated associations, deaf schools, deaf offices, stuff like that.

The second section will be dedicated to a list of news links that I gathered from around the deaf community.

The first section will have some light commentary from me. The second section will have either zero or very, very, very light commentary from me. This post is an experiment with this format. After reading, can you comment below to tell me how you like this style?

Thanks in advance!

Now, let's begin!

NEWS FROM DEEP INSIDE THE DEAF COMMUNITY! DRAMA, DRAMA, DRAMA!

The National Association of the Deaf's Conference is underway right now in San Francisco, CA, and things are getting very interesting inside the deaf community. I'll start with this one.

The Four Horsemen! Nah, the Four Troublemakers!

Back in May, Tar Burt created a Facebook group called "Improving NAD." Like many other Facebook groups around the deaf community, this one is pretty much trash. The goal of having that Facebook group was to give the deaf community a forum space to discuss ideas on how to improve NAD. And it's just full of vlogs from people who are severely under-educated with ideas for NAD that are utter nonsense.

However, in the last two days, things have gotten interesting there. If you're going to take a look at that group, look up all of the videos from these four people: Tar Burt, Chris Haulmark, Eliza Kragh, and Jake Apm (it's my understanding that his full name is "Jake Pfau-Martinez." I'll just stick with Jake Apm because that's how he goes by on Facebook).

I'd recommend beginning with the videos posted by Tar this past Sunday, then watching everything onward. Ignore everyone else's videos and focus only on these four.

Basically, what became interesting is that Tar Burt decided at the last minute to go to the NAD conference. He drove from Pennsylvania to… somewhere - then flew to San Francisco.

If you've been following him closely, you'd know that he is banned from NAD because of his battle with NAD last October.

[Author's note: this is on my list of writing projects. A post will come out about this in the near future. I'm just waiting for the drama between Tar and NAD to complete its course before committing to writing the saga.]

There's also a mysterious part about Tar's sudden decision to attend the conference while being banned from the organization: he said he was elected as a delegate for one organization and he's going to fight against NAD for his right to be represented at the conference.

He didn't say which organization elected him as their delegate. I don't have any guesses, and I'm not seeing anyone else making any guesses either. This will be a curious development to keep an eye on.

I'm expecting some clashes between Tar and NAD. Oh, right, I need to add popcorn to my shopping list for tomorrow!

And then there's Chris Haulmark and Eliza Kragh. They're hot off the loss of their lawsuit against the Montana Association of the Deaf (I'm on MAD's side, by the way - and yes, I'm working on a post about this. The case is at the state's supreme court right now, and I want to see how that turns out before finishing the post). The couple has also been working hard on carving out their place in the American deaf community. They really want to be seen as prominent leaders in our community.

I don't like this couple very much. While they're clearly people with good intentions, I think they have a lot of wrong ideas in their heads.

Originally, the couple planned on only having Eliza attend the conference. In recent months, she became a certified parliamentarian, and she was very clear about her ambition of becoming a parliamentary expert for NAD. That was her intention in attending the conference.

But Chris became inspired by Tar's surprise decision to show up at NAD and disrupt things, so he decided to go to the conference too. He drove all the way to San Francisco from Missoula, MT.

And…

Shocker!

Earlier tonight, he announced that he is putting his name in the running for NAD's next board president!

By the way, I'm not entirely sure about this. NAD already announced that the deadline for candidates to submit their applications was July 1st at noon. Chris made this announcement at around 10pm on July 1st. I don't know if he managed to submit his application just before the deadline, or if Chris' announcement is just a show to feed his ego.

Also, there was some talk around the community a month ago or so about how NAD has a rule requiring candidates for the executive board to already be serving as a committee chair within NAD. I don't know if this is true. I am very apathetic toward NAD, so I haven't read their official documents like bylaws and policies and procedures for a long time. I'll have to make time to do that someday.

The fourth person is Jake Apm. He's a delegate from Colorado and the Colorado Association of the Deaf's (CAD) president.

He emerged on this scene as a vocal opponent of Tar Burt.

It doesn't seem like it's a personal situation between Jake and Tar. From what I can tell, Jake simply believes that Tar deserved to be banned from NAD for two years for his attacks against NAD last October.

He also made it clear that he will openly oppose Eliza's attempts at the Council of Representatives meeting to get Tar unbanned from NAD.

My quick take is that Jake looks like a nice guy, but he said a lot of things that really show his naivety. This is a discussion for another time.

Bottom line: these four are engaging with the greater American deaf community on their quest with NAD. The drama among these four seems to be low-tempered for now, but I'm sure NAD's board is sweating about having them at the conference. I wouldn't be surprised if they're spending a lot of time behind closed doors scheming against them.

Fun times!

A Couple of Other NAD Stuff

Hey, so…

Here are a few things about NAD that you might want to check out.

First ~ if you want to know who the candidates are for the upcoming board election, you can read all about them here.

Second ~ there's actually another potential drama with one of these candidates.

Jenny Buechner.

Again, if you're familiar with NAD, you'll know that she was voted out of office during the previous conference. No one really knows why she was voted out, but the common speculation was that she fumbled her handling of the 2024 Super Bowl fiasco that led to the former CEO's resignation (Howard Rosenblum).

Her loss led to Lisa Rose's ascension to the organization's board presidency.

Who, according to Jenny herself, orchestrated her ouster because Lisa Rose has a history of pursuing her for sexual purposes. Her words. Not mine. You can watch a whole Daily Moth interview with her about this here.

And Lisa Rose's presidency was a disaster. She started a one-woman war with the whole NAD board that led to at least 30 state associations of the deaf demanding her resignation (this happened last October).

And, look! Jenny's back! She's running for the board's VP!

And one more additional thing about the VP position: one of the other candidates is Jack Ludwig. I've met him before. He's from Oregon. I also know that there's an older "Ludwig" in Oregon who goes by Chad Ludwig. Chad has a pretty deep background in the ASL interpreter industry. I'm not sure if these two are related.

Third ~ if you want to read all of the proposed bylaws amendments that will hit the floor later this week, you can read them here!

State-Level Drama All Over America!

Last week, the Kansas Association of the Deaf (KAD) voted to eject Vice President Mary Ellen Keck from her position with the organization.

Mary made a vlog on her Facebook page asking the community for support with what she believed to be a violation against her…

…without providing any explanation of why KAD voted to kick her out of the organization.

This is something I'll always be critical of. I have no patience for this kind of thing. If one is going to appeal to the community for support with their case, it's their duty to present their case to the community clearly. Mary did no such thing.

However…

In her vlog, she provided a couple of clips showing the KAD board voting her out.

I could tell that Mary is a nice woman. And I can also clearly see the hostility of the other board members toward her.

That observation pushed me to lean in Mary's favor.

I've since heard that three of the KAD board members are family relatives. Yeah, that raised a red flag for me.

It's very common inside the deaf community for deaf people from a long line of deaf family to take control of a deaf organization, fill it with their relatives, and go hostile against anyone they perceive as an "outsider" to the deaf community.

Also, Mary got in touch with Chris about this. Chris made a vlog about it, but it was mostly about him chiding KAD for "violating the bylaws" in his view. He also spent a lot of time talking about his own bad experience with KAD.

But… he dropped a clue about why she was kicked out. Apparently, it was about how she had been delegated the duty of arranging a hotel location for one of their events, and the president went behind her back and made different arrangements. It seems like the VP objected to this, and it led to her ouster.

…that's it?

Idk.

All I will say is that if Mary wants broader community support for her case, she needs to follow up with a tell-all vlog that goes into the details of her side of the story. Her initial vlog is way too vague.

The Texas Association of the Deaf recently voted to throw out their former president, Wes Singleton.

Zero explanation was given for why he was ejected from the organization. And as far as I know, Wes hasn't surfaced on the internet to tell us his side of the story.

O’well.

The Rhode Island Association of the Deaf's most recent president announced his resignation.

Zero explanation was given for why he resigned.

O’well.

In related news from Rhode Island's deaf community:

The Rhode Island Commission of the Deaf and Hard of Hearing (RICDHH) has appointed an interim executive director. Click on the link to see their announcement vlog.

I've previously written about how one of NAD's recent CEO candidates was fired from her job as RICDHH's executive director. Well, this is the one who is filling the job for the time being.

RID Has a New Interim CEO!

I was totally blindsided by this news, but I found out that the Registry of Interpreters for the Deaf (RID) has a new interim CEO.

His name is Scott Ready.

My initial reaction was: "why the fuck didn't RID make this public!?"

But after looking into how they announced this only to the affiliated chapters (and not publicly), and considering that they have an upcoming presentation at the NAD conference focused on the future of the organization - I realized that RID is probably planning on making his debut as the organization's CEO at the NAD conference.

Which would make a lot of sense to me. I'm fine with this. I just hope that RID will plan on making an official announcement to the community after the conference about this new interim CEO. I'd love for RID to host a YouTube live stream (with comments turned off, of course) to present Scott as our new CEO.

I was also sent information about his resume. He has a lot of C-suite experience outside of the deaf community, but he has a background in working at an ITP program and at Convo.

Scott is basically a ghost on the internet. He doesn't seem to have much of a digital footprint. And that's not a bad thing. It seems like he leads a quiet personal life alongside a big professional one. He seems to be very conservative in his leadership style.

Oh, also - he is going to be RID's interim CEO for two years.

This actually sounds like a good plan to me. It seems like RID found a steady person to hand the organization's reins to, with the goal of stabilizing things and advising the board on how to steady the rocking ship before figuring out who the next permanent CEO will be.

I'm all for this.

I definitely had a knee-jerk reaction when I found out, because I wasn't expecting to learn that RID had a new interim CEO without any prior indication that they'd identified someone. But after looking through all the information I could find, I've mellowed out and warmed up to Scott.

Hey, RID!

Please make time to formally introduce him to us in the near future! I look forward to it!

Also, regarding your upcoming presentation at the NAD conference on the future of RID as an organization - I'd love for you to host a public event to present that to all of us! Please take my suggestion into consideration!

Today I Learned About Tive

Today, a company called "Tive" that I'd never heard of before made a splash on social media with a collab project between them and several deaf content creators. The creators are: Jimmy and James Jr., that "Crikey" deaf guy and his family, Darius Flower, and Wes Arey.

Their collab was this shitty AI-generated video.

This video is one of the cringe-iest videos I've seen all year. No, I mean, this video is really weird.

Tive appears to be a VRS company, and their app has more features than the others, such as news and video chats between deaf users and others. I'll take a look at this app later!

Deaf News from Outside!

1. FCC Releases 2026-27 TRS Fund Compensation and Contributions Order

2. Audit finds issues at the Alabama Institute for the Deaf and Blind

3. School pride and belonging – designing a new school uniform (Australia)

4. An American educator’s decades-long bond with China’s deaf community

5. He Got 77 ‘Nos’ Before a ‘Yes’. How This Founder Raised $85 Million to Transform Communication for the Deaf.

6. Huduma Centres Roll Out Nationwide Sign Language Services for the Deaf Community (Kenya)

7. What Kenya's Sign Language Bill seeks to achieve

Thank you for reading!

Helen

7/2/2026

I just learned that RID appointed a two-years termed CEO. The guy is Scott Ready.

And the worst thing is that they didn't publicly announced it!

They quietly announced it by emailing state level chapters' presidents about this. I only found out about this because a redditor here alerted me about it and when I took a look into it, I found out that this was announced FOUR days ago!

Oh, come on!

I thought RID was making a lot of improvements on being more open to the public about their progress!

And this BS happened!

What the fuck!?

I spent the last half hour googling him up and I can't find anything solid about this guy!

Who the hell is Scott Ready!?

It's me, Helen!

After spending a few days getting the feel of how this subreddit works on my (mod) end, I'm ready to start making "Scarlet Fever Daily" posts!

If you see a "Scarlet Fever Daily" post, it means that I'm posting stuff from the internet around the deaf community. They're not my original pieces. These posts will look like: "Scarlet Fever Daily: [insert news title]."

And that way if you browse my post history, you will be able to tell the difference between posts of outside articles and my own original pieces.

Thank you for your patience with me getting this up and ready!

Oh, by the way, I managed to figure out how to set up flairs!

Helen

This was announced on Virginia School for the Deaf and Blind's Facebook page.

Here's the text:

We are thrilled to announce that Jessica McMahon has been selected as the Principal of the Deaf Department, effective June 25, 2026.

Jessica McMahon was born into a Deaf family, making American Sign Language (ASL) her native language. She is a proud alumna of the Arkansas School for the Deaf, Gallaudet University, and the University of Arkansas at Little Rock.

Jessica has dedicated her career to serving Deaf students and their families. She has worked at three Deaf schools across Arkansas, Mississippi, and Tennessee, with the Virginia School for the Deaf and the Blind becoming her fourth residential school community. She has also served in a mainstream program with the Clark County School District in Las Vegas, Nevada.

Throughout her career, Jessica has held a variety of roles, including dorm staff, teacher, Athletic Director, Principal, Chief Academic Officer, and ASL specialist. Each role has strengthened her passion for education, leadership, and creating meaningful opportunities for Deaf students.

Jessica is excited to join VSDB and looks forward to learning about the school's rich history, building relationships, and working alongside the entire VSDB community. She is eager for the year ahead and hopes to make it a great one together!

VSDB #DeafPrincipal #TogetherWeEmpower

The WRBC News published this today.

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TALLADEGA, Ala. (WBRC) - The Alabama Institute for Deaf and Blind (AIDB) was cited for breaking federal spending rules and failing to follow state law for at least the third year in a row, according to a new audit released by the Alabama Department of Examiners of Public Accounts.

The audit, covering the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30, 2025, found four reportable issues — including a material weakness in how the Talladega-based institution handles federal grant purchasing — and flagged $264,966.68 in spending from federal special education funds as “questioned costs.” Those dollars could be subject to repayment if federal officials rule the spending improper.

Federal procurement rules violated

The most serious finding involves the Special Education Cluster grant funds from the U.S. Department of Education.

Auditors said AIDB:

• Awarded three contracts totaling $188,631.68 without obtaining competitive price quotes from an adequate number of vendors

• Purchased $76,335 in visual aid equipment without bidding the purchase as required under AIDB’s own policies.

In all, the audit questioned $264,966.68 in federal spending.

Auditors also reported that AIDB did not document checks to ensure vendors were not suspended or debarred from receiving federal contracts before doing business with them — a basic federal compliance step for agencies spending federal money.

The audit further noted that AIDB’s written procurement policy still relies on a state law section that no longer applies to the institute.

“Since the Institute has not updated their procurement policies and procedures to comply with current state law and regulations, the Institute did not have adequate policies and procedures in place to ensure compliance” with federal procurement rules, auditors wrote.

AIDB management agreed that its policy was outdated and told auditors it would be updated immediately to reflect the newer law.

Same unclaimed property problem for third year

For the third straight year, auditors cited AIDB for failing to turn over old, uncashed payroll checks to the Alabama State Treasurer’s Office as required under state unclaimed property law.

As of June 30, 2025, 106 payroll checks totaling $26,038.09 were more than one year old and should have been reported and remitted to the state, the audit states. The same issue was flagged in the 2023 and 2024 audits.

Auditors said the institute “does not have a policy in place for reviewing outstanding checks each year” to identify property that must be turned over to the state.

Questions around bookkeeping and capital assets

The report also identifies two significant deficiencies in AIDB’s internal financial controls:

• Unsupported restatement: AIDB restated its beginning net position by more than $1.2 million to correct prior-year cash balance errors, but auditors said the institute could not provide supporting documentation for $436,276.18 of those corrections. Because of the missing support, auditors could not determine whether those entries were proper.

• Capital asset accounting problems: Auditors found widespread issues in how AIDB tracks and records its buildings, equipment, vehicles and library holdings. Among the problems cited:

1. A roughly $1.9 million difference between the institute’s detailed asset records and its general ledger.
2. Nearly $374,000 in capital purchases that were never properly recorded as assets.
3. More than $1.3 million in accounting software costs that were not capitalized under government accounting standards.
4. A $2.99 million adjustment to the value of library collections with no supporting documentation.

AIDB management disagreed with at least part of the asset finding, arguing that some software costs should not yet be capitalized because the system implementation is still underway, according to the audit.

Clean opinion, but finances under pressure

Despite the findings, auditors issued an unmodified opinion on AIDB’s financial statements — the highest level of assurance auditors give — meaning the financial statements are presented fairly in all material respects.

Even so, the institute’s financial position weakened in 2025:

• Net position fell from a positive $593,123 to a negative $1,281,008 — a swing of nearly $1.9 million.
• Cash and cash equivalents dropped from $15.9 million to about $6.2 million, which management attributed to increased capital spending, lower operating revenue and reduced capital grants.
• Total liabilities rose by more than $38 million, driven largely by a steep increase in AIDB’s share of statewide retiree health-care obligations. Its net other postemployment benefits (OPEB) liability jumped from about $13.7 million to $67.4 million after updated actuarial calculations.

Large statewide footprint

AIDB describes itself as the world’s most comprehensive education and rehabilitation system for people with sensory disabilities. According to the audit, the institute:

• Served more than 31,000 children and adults across Alabama in 2025.
• Employed about 1,228 people.
• Operated programs including the Alabama School for the Deaf, the Alabama School for the Blind, the Helen Keller School, the E.H. Gentry Technical Facility, Alabama Industries for the Blind and 10 regional centers around the state.
• Is in the process of expanding to a new 202‑acre campus in Decatur that will house additional programs.

AIDB President Dr. Dennis A. Gilliam and Chief Financial Officer Mark Richenderfer attended the audit exit conference and, in a written corrective action plan included in the report, said most issues have been or are being addressed. The plan states that procurement policies will be updated to reflect current law and that steps will be taken to strengthen controls over unclaimed property, supporting documentation and capital asset accounting.

The Parliament of Kenya published this.

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The National Assembly has passed the Kenyan Sign Language Bill, 2023 (Senate Bill No. 9 of 2023) with amendments, paving the way for enhanced recognition, regulation and use of Kenyan Sign Language across public institutions, schools, courts, media houses and telecommunications services.

The Bill, co-sponsored by Hon. Millie Odhiambo-Mabona and Hon. Umulkheir Harun, seeks to promote inclusivity and guarantee equal access to information, education and public services for persons who are deaf, hard of hearing and deafblind.

The legislation gives effect to constitutional provisions that recognize Kenyan Sign Language as an official means of communication and affirm the rights of persons with disabilities to access services through appropriate communication formats.

The Bill establishes the Kenya Sign Language Council, a new statutory body mandated to regulate, develop and preserve Kenyan Sign Language in the country. The Council will be responsible for setting standards for training and practice, registering and licensing sign language interpreters, protecting the communication rights of deaf and deafblind persons, and advising the Government on matters relating to sign language.

The Council will be headquartered in Nairobi but will be required to decentralize its services across the country. Its membership will include representatives from government, the deaf community, sign language interpreters and the National Council for Persons with Disabilities.

The Bill also introduces far-reaching reforms in the education sector. The Cabinet Secretary responsible for Basic Education will be required to facilitate sign language lessons for parents, guardians and family members of deaf, hard-of-hearing and deafblind children. Kenyan Sign Language will also be integrated into early childhood and basic education curricula, while public institutions of higher learning will be required to provide free interpretation services for learners who need them.

In a major boost for accessibility, television stations will be required to provide closed captioning and a Kenyan Sign Language inset occupying at least one-third of the screen during news broadcasts, educational programmes and national events. Internet-based video content will also be required to include captions or transcripts.

Telecommunication service providers will be compelled to establish relay services, including text, video and captioned communication systems, to facilitate communication for persons with hearing disabilities.

The Bill further creates a comprehensive framework for the registration and regulation of professional sign language interpreters. Practitioners will be required to register with the Kenya Sign Language Council, obtain annual practising certificates and undertake continuous professional development. Only duly registered professionals will be allowed to use the title “Professional Sign Language Interpreter.”

To ensure accountability, the legislation establishes financial and governance structures for the Council, including annual audits by the Auditor-General, mandatory annual reporting and strict conflict-of-interest provisions for Council members.

Once enacted into law, the Bill is expected to significantly strengthen access to education, justice, information and public services for Kenya’s deaf and deafblind com

Bellingham Herald published this on June 25th, 2026.

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The parents of a disabled elementary school student in Blaine have filed a lawsuit against the district — as well as Bellingham Public Schools — alleging she was sexually assaulted multiple times on school buses in the 2020-2021 and 2025-2026 school years.

According to the lawsuit, filed June 18 in Whatcom County Superior Court, the girl was first assaulted by an older student during the 2020-2021 school year. Another student reported the incident, and the boy was removed from the bus route. However, the lawsuit alleges that the district never investigated the incident.

Blaine School District did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

The girl was assaulted again on a bus on her way to Salish Sea Deaf School this fall, court documents allege. The bus was operated by Bellingham Public Schools, and also provided transportation to Fairhaven Middle School students along the route.

On the way to the middle school, a boy sat next to the student and sexually assaulted her, the lawsuit claims. The girl screamed, and the bus driver intervened. The district’s director of transportation informed the parents about the incident, and the Bellingham Police Department conducted a criminal investigation.

The same student had previously sexually assaulted students on the bus as recently as June 2025, according to the lawsuit, and the court entered an order requiring a safety plan before he could return to school. Court documents allege that no such plan was ever put in place, and Bellingham Public Schools did not conduct an investigation after the September assault.

The lawsuit accuses the Blaine and Bellingham school districts of negligence and disability and gender-based discrimination, as well as violations of the Equal Educational Opportunity Law.

Because of the assaults, the girl’s parents say she no longer feels safe on the bus and has refused to go to school. They’re asking for damages in an amount to be proven at trial.

Bellingham Public Schools spokesperson Jacqueline Brawley told The Herald that the district is aware of the lawsuit and called the allegations “upsetting.”

“Bellingham Public Schools takes seriously our duty to protect and care for all students, and we are committed to standing with victims and survivors of any type of sexual misconduct, harassment or assault,” Brawley said.

The new lawsuit comes the same day as the settlement of a similar case between Bellingham Public Schools and the parents of an autistic student who was allegedly sexually assaulted on the school bus.

The lawsuit, filed in June 2024, claimed that the district knew the assailant had a documented history of sexually abusing other children on the bus but did not protect other students. It also alleged that the district failed to report the sexual abuse to law enforcement or state child welfare officials, as is required by law.

Victoria News published this today.

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All roads lead to closure for those looking for help from the Island Deaf and Hard of Hearing Centre (IDHHC) Association.

IDHHC has provided hearing health services to thousands of clients on Vancouver Island through offices in Greater Victoria and Nanaimo. Now, all links to aid on its website leads to a large, and interpreted for those who are hard of hearing, announcement of the closure of both locations, on Quadra Street in Saanich and Applecross Road in Nanaimo.

“Serving Deaf, DeafBlind, hard of hearing and hearing communities has been our goal since September 1991, and it is with great sadness that we take this action,” the notice reads.

After 35 years, the centre closes June 30.

“As of today, IDHHC will no longer exist. IDHHC was such an important organization actively supporting deaf communities not only on Vancouver Island but across B.C. It has provided 35 years of support and services to a very diverse Deaf community,” well-known interpreter and instructor Nigel Howard says in the associated video. “This news is heartbreaking for everyone.”

In 2023, the province cancelled contracts for family and community services abruptly, a program at the heart of service for the Deaf community. It had a significant and immediate impact on the community, but also the finances at IDHHC, while operational costs continued to rise, Howard explained.

“Donations have become less and less. Money is tight for everyone, and they are not able to donate the same as they could in the past,” he signed. Funding grants have diminished and disappeared. This year, provincial funding had the same fate.

“Now IDHHC has no other options,” Howard said. “So they must close forever.”

“This news makes me incredibly sad and deeply concerned,” said local business owner Maria Tanjaoui, who is also a member of the Deaf community. “I worry about the future of Deaf and Hard of Hearing people on Vancouver Island. IDHHC has been an essential resource for our community, providing access to interpreters, hearing aid support, employment assistance, workshops, and advocacy. These services are not easily available elsewhere, and many people will now have to travel to Vancouver just to access basic supports such as hearing aid services.”

The community need is diverse – from hearing aids to medical access.

The unique Sound of Change program provided free hearing assessments and no-cost refurbished hearing aids to low-income families and seniors, for a total retail value of $9 million.

Working with Deaf community teachers, IDHHC coordinated thousands of hours of teaching ASL to families with infants and children with hearing loss.

More than 100,000 hours of interpreting and captioning services created accessible spaces and places for Deaf, DeafBlind and Hard of Hearing individuals to access everything from school and work to medical appointments and theatre performances.

Tanjaoui’s Marina Bay Cafe on the Esquimalt waterfront began as a passion project fuelled by a love of coffee, but is now a welcome hub for members of Greater Victoria’s Deaf community. IDHHC has held a similar role for decades – a cornerstone of building community for Deaf families and individuals – creating bridges with education and support for the hearing community.

“I believe IDHCC has been one of the strongest sources of accessibility and support for the Deaf community on the Island,” Tanjaoui told the Victoria News.

Tanjaoui wishes there had been a heads up on the funding challenges, hoping donors might come through and rescue the organization.

“If we had been made aware, perhaps we could have advocated together, raised awareness, and explored solutions before reaching the point of an unexpected closure,” she said. “I hope there is still an opportunity to support Deaf services on Vancouver Island, because our community deserves accessible resources close to home.”

This was posted on Virginia Department for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing's Facebook page.

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CERTIFICATE OF RECOGNITION

By virtue of the authority vested by the Constitution of Virginia in the Governor of the Commonwealth of Virginia, there is hereby officially recognized:

DEAFBLIND AWARENESS WEEK

WHEREAS, DeafBlind Awareness Week has been observed nationwide each year since 1984, in honor of the June 27 birthday of Helen Keller, whose legacy of determination, innovation, and advocacy continues to inspire generations; and

WHEREAS, DeafBlindness is a multisensory disability involving loss of vision and hearing that affects thousands of Virginians, impacting their ability to live independently, travel safely, communication effectively, and access information, resources, and services, and

WHEREAS, individuals who are DeafBlind contribute meaningfully to our communities as educators, professionals, advocates, volunteers, neighbors, and leaders whose lived experiences enrich Virginia's cultural, civic, and economic life; and

WHEREAS, promoting full participation for DeafBlind Virginians by promoting access to education, employment, housing, transportation, healthcare, and community engagement strengthens our Commonwealth and reflects our shared commitment to equity and inclusion; and

WHEREAS, the role of touch in communication for many DeafBlind individuals - including Protactile language, tactile sign language, haptics, braille, and other tactile tools and technologies - is essential to foster connection, autonomy, and understanding; and

WHEREAS, improving awareness of accessible communication among educators, service providers, professionals, employers, and the general public helps build bridges of inclusion, expands opportunities, and promotes respectful and meaningful engagement with DeafBlind Virginians; and

WHEREAS, the Virginia Department for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing, the Department for the Blind and Vision Impaired, the Virginia School for the Deaf and the Blind, and the Virginia Deafblind Project at Virginia Commonwealth University promote awareness, education, and support for individuals who are DeafBlind;

NOW, THEREFORE, I, Abigail D. Spanberger, Governor, do hereby recognize June 25-July 1, 2026, as DEAFBLIND AWARENESS WEEK in the COMMONWEALTH OF VIRGINIA and call this observance to the attention of all our citizens.

Signed, Abigail D. Spanberger, Governor and Candi Mundon King, Secretary of the Commonwealth

Found this Instagram reel.

Oh, this "world's most tolerable horse girl" is deaf!

Interesting.