More by accident than design—and RealAudio aside—the Internet is
a godsend for people with impaired hearing. “It’s a great equaliser,” says
Kirsty Warwick, media communications officer at Britain’s Royal National
Institute for Deaf People. The Web has opened many doors. Deaf people can now
communicate as easily as any hearing person through e-mail and newsgroup
bulletin boards.
Next week, the liberating power of the Net will be centre stage as
Britain’s 8.7 million hearing-impaired people celebrate Deaf Awareness Week. The
RNID will be relaunching its website on www.rnid.org.uk. New features include
updated facilities for e-commerce, reviews of equipment, plus a jobs site. Also
relaunched is the British Deaf Association’s site at www.bda.org.uk.
For deaf travellers, sites don’t come much more useful than
http://deafworldweb.org. It has entries for every country, listing the preferred sign
languages in various territories and the facilities available.
Advertisement
News junkies, meanwhile, should try www.deaftoday.com or
www.silentnews.org. Silentnews is looking super-slick since its relaunch
in September and claims to be “the world’s most popular website of deaf and hard-of-hearing
DZ”.
For some valuable links, try the BBC’s minisite for the deaf at
www.bbc.co.uk/see_hear. For deaf children, there’s a fun resource site at
www.deafchild.org.
Gallaudet University in Washington DC is the world’s only university
exclusively for people with impaired hearing (www.gallaudet.edu). A fascinating
minisite entitled “History through deaf eyes” highlights hardships of deaf
people during some of our bleakest history, such as the Second World War and the
Holocaust. Other more erudite sites include www.wfdnews.org set up by the World
Federation of the Deaf.