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Some hard-of-hearing patients in England are having to wait more than two years for an NHS hearing aid. The Royal National Institute for Deaf People (RNID) used the Freedom of Information Act to discover just how long the waits were. It found that ten trusts were not treating patients within a year, in spite of the Government’s target being 18 weeks. The worst offender was Kingston upon Thames, southwest London, where patients had to wait 125 weeks for an aid after first seeing their GP. The average wait was 22 weeks in the 99 primary care trusts (PCTs) across the...

A federal appeals court ordered a San Francisco judge on Friday to reconsider his ruling requiring United Parcel Service to give its deaf employees a chance to compete for jobs as drivers of small delivery trucks. The Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled 13-2 that U.S. District Judge Thelton Henderson had used the wrong standard in his 2004 decision that UPS was discriminating against deaf people with safe driving records by refusing to consider them for commercial driving jobs. Henderson allowed the plaintiffs to show that they were qualified for the jobs based on their driving records, and failed...

DEAF parents should be allowed to screen their embryos so they can pick a deaf child over one that has all its senses intact, according to the chief executive of the Royal National Institute for Deaf and Hard of Hearing People (RNID). Jackie Ballard, a former Liberal Democrat MP, says that although the vast majority of deaf parents would want a child who has normal hearing, a small minority of couples would prefer to create a child who is effectively disabled, to fit in better with the family lifestyle. Ballard’s stance is likely to be welcomed by other deaf organisations,...

Donnell Williams had just gotten out of the bath tub, wearing only a towel around his waist, when he turned the corner to see guns pointing right at him. "I ain't never been so scared," says Williams. Police forced entry into Williams home while responding to a shooting, but it turned out to be a false call. They had no idea at the time the call wasn't real and that Williams is hearing impaired. Without his hearing aid he is basically deaf. "I kept going to my ear yelling that I was scared. I can't hear! I can't hear!" Officers...

FORT WORTH -- A store cashier struck a deaf customer in the head with a crowbar after he mistook the man's silence for rudeness and disrespect, police said. The cashier, Ricky Benard Young, 20, is charged with aggravated assault with a deadly weapon. The customer, Cody Goodnight, 31, suffered "a large knot" on his head during the incident, which occurred Saturday at the Family Dollar Store at 4117 E. Lancaster Ave. "I can't believe someone would hit him for not speaking," said Goodnight's mother, Kay Goodnight. "When you're deaf, you don't make a point of starting conversations with people." Young's...

Pfc. Patti Angel, a food service specialist from Grand Junction, Colo., from Company F, 203rd Brigade Support Battalion, serves Soldiers their meals from a mobile kitchen trailer at Combat Outpost Cleary. Photo by Sgt. Natalie Rostek, 3rd Brigade Combat Team, 3rd Infantry Division Public Affairs. COMBAT OUTPOST CLEARY — Pfc. Patti Angel faces communication barriers no amount of waiting in line or talking into a phone can help. Her parents are deaf. Keeping in touch back home is already tough for deployed Soldiers with friends and family members who can hear. Not being able to use the conventional means of...

After laying siege to a house for five hours, police gave a final warning before storming the house where a gunman had been reported inside. A police dog rushed upstairs and, finding a woman in bed, proceeded to sink its teeth into her arms. But as armed officers surrounded a terrified Sonia Pellow, they realised two things. First, she wasn't a gunman. Second, she was deaf and had been sleeping throughout the entire stand-off. Yesterday Miss Pellow, 36, was still too afraid to return to her home in Hayle, Cornwall, after the ordeal, which followed a hoax call to police...

For a number of years now, a great deal of discussion has taken place among scientists and in the popular media about the genetic engineering of children. Will it soon be possible, for prices widely affordable at least to the upper-middle class, to guarantee that children have a high IQ, or excellent athletic ability, or be over 6 feet tall, or have blond hair and blue eyes? Is it right to commodify children in this way, and have parents choosing options as they do with cars? And wouldn’t it be boring to live in a world someday where almost everyone...

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The nation's only liberal arts university for the deaf could lose its accreditation unless it addresses concerns about weak academic standards, ineffective governance and a lack of tolerance for diverse views, an education oversight group warned. Gallaudet University was rocked by student demonstrations last fall that shut down the university for several days and forced the board to revoke the appointment of a new president. Afterward, the Middle States Commission on Higher Education said it was delaying a decision on whether to renew the school's accreditation because of concerns raised during the protests and because of a...

CBS/AP) EAST MEADOW, N.Y. It has taken a week, but the East Meadow School District is now telling its side of the controversy involving a deaf boy who wants to bring a service dog to class. East Meadow has prevented 14-year-old John Cave from bringing his dog Simba to the W. Tresper Clarke High School. The family has the state's Human Rights Commission looking into the case. East Meadow Superintendent Robert Dillon says the boy's parents have "repeatedly rejected" efforts to discuss the boy's wish to bring his service dog to school. In a statement released late Tuesday, Dillon says...

WASHINGTON (AP) - Gallaudet University has turned to former student with national credentials to lead the school until a permanent president can be selected. The school's board of trustees has announced that Robert Davila will serve as interim president beginning Jan. 2, when Irving King Jordan steps down after 19 years. Davila, who graduated from Gallaudet in 1953, says he worried about getting into Gallaudet while attending the California School for the Deaf as a 12-year-old boy. He taught at Galluadet for 17 years beginning in 1972. He also served as vice president of the National Technical Institute for the...

At least 16 Ramsey County deputies and correctional officers are being investigated for allegedly keeping a jailed deaf man incommunicado by denying him an interpreter or communication device, Sheriff Bob Fletcher said Friday. The 16 are still on duty, but Fletcher said he is looking into how they dealt with Douglas Bahl, an internationally known deaf advocate who was arrested Nov. 17 in St. Paul for running a red light. "We are taking this very seriously," said Fletcher. "Mr. Bahl seems very credible. If one or more of our employees have failed to act in the appropriate way, we will...

One of my dance students sent me this last week and I was in tears watching it. It's beautiful on its own, but what makes it so heart wrenching is all the dancers are deaf-mutes. And no, there are no special effects, those are real arms.

PHOENIX -- The state Attorney General's Office is suing Pima Community College, charging it didn't provide the help a hearing impaired student said she needed. Legal papers filed in Maricopa County Superior Court say that the college did provide sign language interpreters so that Stacey Duvall could understand what her instructors in the pharmacy technology program were saying. But Assistant Attorney General Sandra Kane said that in at least two of the cases, Duvall could not understand the interpreters. Kane said, though, that the college insisted the two were qualified and refused to replace them. At one point there was...

Well. It's confirmed. Senator McCain resigned his honorary position from the Board of Trustees at Gallaudet University. Like one commenter said, "McCain can take a LOT of flak- Gee, Deafies ran off the guy who stood up to the North VN Communists! ACK!" Indeed. McCain was a POW in North Vietnam. He's now an ex-honorary member of Gallaudet's Board of Trustees....

WASHINGTON — The board of trustees of the nation's premier school for the deaf voted Sunday to terminate the appointment of the incoming president, who had been the subject of protests, the board announced. The vote at Gallaudet University came after a daylong closed-door meeting that followed a month of protests by students and faculty members. Jane Fernandes, the school's former provost, had been selected in May to take office in January.

Breaking News Gallaudet Board Votes Out Jane Fernandes Washington Post sources confirm that controversial president-elect's appointment has been rescinded.

And then you have a recent assault against Dr. Jane K. Fernades (first deaf woman to become the 9th president of Gallaudet University) where some idiot threatened her with a gun. She explained to reporters when they asked her whether she has been threatened with assault. She said, "Yes, with a gun." Check out NBC4 video during her press conference when she said that at 23 seconds left into the video. The incoming president said that in the midst of the the conflict she has recieved death threats and other personal attacks.....

The 1990 Americans with Disabilities Act reflected a generous national impulse to provide the most opportunity... But the law has also sometimes led to overzealous interpretations ...that can defy common sense -- and endanger the broader public. A case in point is last week's ruling by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals that United Parcel Service has violated federal law by banning drivers who are deaf. While acknowledging that federal law requires drivers of trucks heavier than 10,000 pounds to be able to hear, a three-judge panel of the ...court ruled that UPS was obliged to prove that allowing the...

Gallaudet University students blocked access to campus for a second day Thursday, escalating their protest against an incoming president they say lacks the skills to lead the nation's only liberal arts university for the deaf and hearing impaired. "We're in the middle of a crisis here," said LaToya Plummer, 25, a junior from Suitland, Md., who was among the protesters. The blockade started around 3 a.m. Wednesday and forced the university to cancel classes for a second day Thursday as about 100 students protested at the front gate. Students sitting in 11 chairs blocked the main campus road at the...