Archive for the 'From the Editor' Category
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… haven’t updated in a long time. Sorry about that. Soon …
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I’ve been noticing a lot of referrer spam in my logs, so I installed this plugin that blocks referrer spam. Hopefully it won’t cause my posts to break on RSS readers and blog aggregators. Please let me know if anything breaks. Thanks!
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I started writing in this blog in March of 2007, and in January, this blog hit one million unique visits. Thanks!
Here’s to the next million!
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A reader let me know that this blog had ben hacked and was showing drug spam. Sorry about that – I upgraded the WordPress to 2.3.2 and that seems to have solved the problem. Please let me know if this blog breaks in any more ways.
Thanks much!
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Sometimes life gets in the way of blogging, and before you know it, it’s been ten days since your last post. My apologies. Thanks for hanging in there. I’ll start some new posts today.
In the meantime, I’d been considering moving my websites to a green hosting company for a while. I had some misgivings about doing this as I’ve been with Dreamhost for a while and am pretty happy with them and wasn’t willing to give up their service. Recently, Dreamhost announced they are now a green hosting company. This means that all three of my sites – this blog, my personal blog, and my photography site – are all carbon-neutral, and I can scratch “switch to green hosting” off my to-do list. Thank you, Dreamhost!
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Virginia DeBolt gave Stone Deaf Pilots a positive review on BlogHer. Thanks!
The deaf tech blog is Stone Deaf Pilots. This blog is by Kathryn Hill. It covers deaf technology, assistive technology, and tech-related accessibility issues faced by the deaf and hard of hearing. It’s a fairly recent addition to the blogosphere, but has gained a substantial audience with posts about everything from captionioning, movies, podcasting, text messaging, and video from the perspective of tech needs of the deaf and otherwise disabled. One thread I found particularly interesting was about the unpreparedness of 911 call centers to handle calls from disabled people. Although I’m not deaf, I’m certainly interested in making sure the Internet is accessible to everyone. I find this blog very helpful.
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I started Stone Deaf Pilots for many reasons, the main one being that I wanted a place where both deaf and hearing people could come to learn about deaf technology. With so many different technology options on the market these days, it’s difficult to keep track of them all, and I wanted to provide an organized catalog for them. Technology helps people with disabilities to function more independently. In the case of deaf people, technology helps to bridge the gap between the deaf and hearing worlds. As hearing people find themselves interacting with deaf people more and more these days due to technology, they find themselves asking many questions. I hope this blog can help provide some answers.
Also, since assistive technology is still a very small niche, people who do not use it are unaware of it and the needs of those who use it. Technology has come a long way and those of us with disabilities have far more options today than we did 10-20 years ago, but there is still a need for more assistive technology or improvements on current technology, and a need for the population at large to understand this.
It has been estimated that 28 million Americans suffer from some form of hearing loss. The aging baby boomer generation will reach retirement age in 2010, the number of Americans with hearing loss is expected to rapidly climb and nearly double by the year 2030. As I have blogged previously, the US is not ready to handle the rise in the disabled population, nor are the 911 call centers.
I started this blog in January of this year with my initial post about the Apple iPhone, but I did not formally announce the blog until March 23rd when I went to the CSUN Technology & Disabilities Conference. Since March 23rd, this site has received over 105,000 unique visitors. To all of you reading this, thank you for reading, and thank you for helping to spread the word about this blog. Keep reading, keep telling people about Stone Deaf Pilots, and here’s looking forward to the next 105,000 visitors!
Onward!
