Claudia Gordon Appointed as Public Engagement Advisor at the White House

Claudia Gordon was recently appointed as the Public Engagement Advisor for the Disability Community in the Office of Public Engagement at the White House. She is the first deaf African American woman to become an attorney as well as the first deaf student to graduate from the American University (AU) Washington College of Law in Washington, DC in 2000. The discrimination Gordon experienced as a deaf child in Jamaica compelled her to become a lawyer. At age eight, she moved to the United States and attended the Lexington School for the Deaf in New York where she learned sign language.

Link: http://www.nad.org/news/2013/7/nad-applauds-appointment-claudia-gordon-public-engagement-advisor-white-house

Digital Assistance for Sign Language Users

Researchers from Microsoft Research Asia have collaborated with colleagues from the Institute of Computing Technology at the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) to explore how Kinect’s body-tracking abilities can be applied to the problem of sign-language recognition. Results have been encouraging in enabling people whose primary language is sign language to interact more naturally with their computers, in much the same way that speech recognition does.

Link: http://blogs.technet.com/b/inside_microsoft_research/archive/2013/07/16/digital-assistance-for-sign-language-users.aspx

CUHK Research Reveals Impact of Mild Hearing Loss on School Children

A recent research of The Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK) revealed that children with mild bilateral hearing loss (defined as having hearing threshold in between 26-40 dB HL), if not diagnosed and intervened early, would miss up to 50% of speech sounds which may result in significant communication and learning difficulties, lack of energy and shorter attention span.

Link: http://www.healthcanal.com/ear-nose-throat/40521-cuhk-research-reveals-impact-of-mild-hearing-loss-on-school-children.html

Science is moving fast in addressing genetic causes of deafness

“Over the next decade, most of the variant genes responsible for deafness will be identified, and such knowledge will lead to the development of practical treatments.” So predict four scientists from the University of Miami writing in the June 2013 issue of Genetic Testing and Molecular Biomarkers (GTMB). Read more at the Hearing Health Matters website.

Link: http://hearinghealthmatters.org/hearingnewswatch/2013/science-is-moving-fast-in-addressing-genetic-causes-of-deafness/