Re: Deaf Matters

[sarcasmo@fuse.net]

On Wed, 22 Aug 2001, Kurt Cagle wrote:

> Some thoughts on this, having dealt with accessibility issuesin the past.
(snip)
> It is worth looking at an HML document as a description of an avatar even if
> that avatar is itself an accurate representation of a human being. To that
> extent, to perhaps dehumanize it just a little bit, it's probably worth
> that can or cannot support certain media formats (or may support them in
> limited fashion).
>
> For instance, from a purely functional standpoint, a person who is hard of
> hearing may simply need for the volume of the application to turn up by 50%,
> while for a person who has no hearing the same action would be not only
> useless but an irritant for anyone else in the same room.  Additionally, one
> of the purposes of such an HML document is to provide a mechanism that would
> inform a media browser to map a certain media format (perhaps through RDF or
> XSLT or some combination thereof) to a different media format for
> presentation. If I have a VoxML stream and a query against the HML reveals
> that the person can't hear but has a map to an XHTML reader instead, this
> I'd be especially careful about the terminology used here. From
> personal experience (I have two close friends who are blind, and another two
> who are parapelegic - one a former near Olympic quality skier who was injured
> in a skiing accident) the wrong terminology can prove to be political
> dynamite.
>
> Finally (and I think this holds for HML in toto) it may be worth while to
> handle this as a distinct module. For most people, this information isn't
> immediately relevant, and there is no real reason to include it, but when it
> is needed, there are a number of characteristics that would tend to go
> together -- associated mappings between media, units used, and so forth. This
> is ticklish in another respect, because you begin to blur the distinction
> between what is appropriate as an avatar description and what becomes a
> medical record; if I have a listing indicating some form of mental disability
> in particular, and this becomes integrated into such an avatar database that
> becomes accessible to outside vendors, then you have a potential lawsuit on
> your hands.
>
> -- Kurt

# note, I am including a post I sent privately by mistake, my apologies.
# it was meant to be a general reply (oopsie). Sorry for any
# mangling of threads this may have caused.

The more I think about this, the more of a brain buster it becomes.
In fact, I may have jumped the gun by posting to this list at all,
since I must put forward that any representation of the Deaf would
probably be an incredible failure due to this factor: text.

I'm fortunate that I was able to overcome the language barrier and
develop skills in written and spoken English. Without turning this into
an off-topic post about 'My Life' I want to explore this avenue, surely.
Suffice to say, any textually-based language to the deaf usually ends
up being ... low on their list.

So, what to do?  Iconic representation? Mapping common ASL signs through
an DTD or XML construct to embedded graphics?  I fear that I may be too
stupid to come up with an alternative.  All I know, is that I should not
expect to have some sort of 'broken' or 'pidgin' written language as the
base and even hope for the best.  I must break with tradition.  It just
seems to me than HumanML could be a 'base' to build on.  I don't know.