Maryland Association of the Deaf

Mary Ann Richmond and Beth Benedict

The purpose of this VLOG is to inform/explain about EHDI and why the deaf community should be involved and how to get involved. The acronym: EHDI stands for Early Hearing Detection and Intervention.

This is a law which was passed and in effect since 1991. This law requires all hospitals to screen all infants to test their hearing. If the infants’ hearing screening results show further testing needed to determine the level of hearing. Their deaf babies will need at least one more hearing screening to determine the need of diagnosis to find the level of hearing. After the diagnosis of the hearing level, the deaf baby and family start receiving early intervention services. In the past before the EHDI law, many deaf children were identified deaf at later age- 3, 4 or 5 yrs of age which caused lag in education and language development. The law has helped many deaf and hard of hearing chilldren to be on the par academically. Now, why should deaf community be involved in the EHDI process for the hearing parents?

How many of you know about EHDI? Not many of you know about this law. Deaf community has been “sleeping”. It is important for you to get involved. About 90- 95% of deaf babies have hearing parents. For those hearing parents,they never met deaf children and their deaf baby is their first time to meet a deaf child. They may think their deaf baby is the one and only deaf baby around not knowing there are many deaf people around. They want to know can the deaf people live independently and have job, how do the deaf people wake up in the morning not being able to hear the alarm clock to go to work, they don’t know about various assistive technology: light signaller, vibrator, TTY, VP… They have no idea what deaf people can do. Research studies have shown the hearing parents get over with their grief quickly after they meet deaf people. It is normal for them to experience grieving process for their deaf babies. They need to meet you as their deaf models to give them hope that their deaf baby will be ok.

If you are interested in getting involved to work with MDAD in the EHDI arena, let us know by email: info@mdad.tv. We can discuss more after we hear from you. Thank you for viewing this clip.

Greetings! MDAD has wonderful news to share with you: the Maryland state house and senate just introduced bills in support of captioning on the Internet. House Bill (HB) 580 and Senate Bill (SB) 596 would define the internet as a “place of public accommodation.” This would provide us with critical access to information of all types on the internet.

Many videos are currently uploaded to the internet without captions. A federal law was recently passed and signed by President Obama requiring all broadcasters releasing television programs on the internet to provide captions for those programs. However, the federal law does not require captioning on internet video content provided by businesses.

For example, health care information in online videos from companies like Kaiser Permanente, video content giving updates from companies about their products, and other types of videos are not required to provide captioning under the federal law. Maryland laws HB 580 and SB 596 will require captioning to provide us with necessary access to these important videos.

Please contact your legislators today to tell them how important internet captioning is to you and urge them to vote in support of these bills.

As just one example, let me give you a personal reason why the passing of these bills is important to me. I have a young daughter and she and I watch educational videos on the internet together. I know that she’s interested in learning more about what she watches, and I’d love to be able to describe to her what the video is saying or discuss what she’s learned in further detail. But without captions on those videos, I can not. As a father, I’m frustrated by the lack of captioning and it impacts my ability to support my daughter as she learns. I’m sure you feel that same frustration and have your own personal stories that describes how captioning on internet videos is important to you. Contact your legislators, share your stories, and urge them to support these bills.

For more information, log on to the MDAD website at www.mdad.tv

For more information, log on to the MDAD website at www.mdad.tv

One important bill that’s currently being debated in the Maryland Senate, Senate Bill (SB) 22 (now cross-filed as House Bill 1000). The Senate debate take place in this chamber you see behind me. This bill would require that political campaign advertisements includes captions.

The current bill as proposed would require captioning on campaign advertisements for the positions of governor, lieutenant governor, comptroller, and counselor general that air during the campaign season. MDAD disagrees with the law being limited to those four positions, and we are asking you to please send letters to your legislators encouraging them to expand the law to apply to all political campaign advertising, rather than applying only to the four positions currently included.
Please act now.

You can find further information about how to contact your legislator, including a sample letter that you can send, at www.mdad.tv. Please take the time to contact them and send the clear message that we want captions to be required on ALL political campaign advertisements.
—

Dear Senator/Representative (NAME):

Please make communication access a priority by amending Senate Bill (SB) 22/House Bill (HB) 1000, Election Law – Campaign Advertisements – Closed Captioning to apply to all political candidates for office in the state of Maryland and supporting the bill.

The current bill applies only to candidates for statewide office (Governor, Lieutenant Governor, Comptroller, and Attorney General). We care who represents us in the General Assembly and the County Council and we want to make informed decisions when we cast our vote.

We ask that you join with us this session and promote full and equal access to political advertisements and support Election Law – Campaign Advertisements – Closed Captioning without the proposed amendment above.

Your leadership and advocacy will bring needed attention to this important barrier during the campaign season faced by Marylanders who are deaf or hard of hearing.

Sincerely,

(YOUR NAME)