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From: Gerry.Grimm@p0.f71.n343.z1.fidonet.org (Gerry Grimm)
Newsgroups: misc.handicap
Subject: Wash. State Assn of Deaf Convention
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Date: 12 Jul 90 21:27:32 GMT
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[This is from the Silent Talk Conference]

Hi everyone...just wanted to share a little of the news taking place 
out on the West Coast here.  This weekend the Washington State Assn 
of the Deaf held its annual convention for a crowd of 100 to 300 people 
(hard to say the exact number).
 
The politics of conventions like this are always interesting, and 
this year was no exception.  Topics of conversation included: the 
Washington State Relay System, Unity in the 90's, and the new law 
just passed by Congress (Americans with Disablities Act, I believe 
is the name).  Dinner and dancing took place after the meetings on 
Saturday.
 
One of the more interesting aspects of the convention (for me anyway) 
was the "Business Fair".  Businesses and groups with information to 
pass out to the hearing impaired communtity were in attendance.  We 
had people from "The Frat", Seattle Public Library, two different 
real estate companies, one mortgage rep, a broker from Merril-Lynch 
securities, the Seattle Hearing, Speech and Deafness Center, Eddie 
Bauer outdoor apparel, A.L. Williams insurance sales, Tele-Page Northwest, 
and my favorite (grin) ... the Seattle Hearing Impaired's BBS and 
the hearing impaired SIG of the Pac. NW PC User Group (PNWPCUG).  
 
All of the information available at the business fair portion of the 
convention was interesting.  Most of you are probably aware that there 
are pagers (beepers) available for hearing impaired, that can vibrate 
and display info on a small screen...the nice part about Tele-Page 
Northwest is that they set up a program that allows tdd users to call 
in and page people with the pagers.  Hearing people can page deaf 
users, deaf can page each other or hearing people.....very handy, 
and I might add, quite a success with those that have used the pagers.
 
Debbie Salo and I put on a demo, using a TDD and two computers, of 
the SHI-BBS.  Readers of Silent Talk recently should know that we 
have two BBS phone lines, one for TDD and one for computer.  The TDD 
line also accepts phone calls from computers at up to 300 baud. 
Unfortunately, we couldn't show how to access the BBS via computer, 
due to problems with the phones installed at the hotel, but we did 
demo the BBS using a TDD.  We had a lot of folks that were interested 
in the BBS and our computer group. One man from Spokane (in the east 
part of Washington) wants us to come and show them how to set up a 
BBS for the hearing impaired in that area.
 
One thing that excited a lot of the convention crowd was that our 
computer group (SHI-SIG) will be meeting at a new location startin 
in July.  I work for Boeing and asked the National Computer Training 
Center (a Boeing Computer Services entity) if we could use their facilities 
for holding our meetings in the future.  Surprisingly enough, they 
said yes!  We will have a meeting room with 15 IBM XT's, an overhead 
projector, an overhead projector viewer that plugs into a pc and displays 
everything that happens on the computer, about 7 printers plus a Laserjet 
II printer, white board and so on.  Needless to say, we're excited!
 
Eventually, the meetings will become more and more focused on training 
the hearing impaired to use computers, but for now we'll just be doing 
demos of various software.
 
I'm out of space here.  I'll take this up at another time.  I'd like 
to hear what other hearing impaired computer user groups are doing....ok?

--
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