Text Messenger 'Walkee-Talkees' have finally arrived!

Deaf people can wirelessly instant message their friends, their bosses, their doctors, and attorneys. These devices are an incredible breakthrough in technology and cost for face-to-face communication equipment. These small hand held infared based devices can send and receive text messages makes them perfect for face-to-face communication.

Why should people spend almost $2,000 for a pair of face-to-face communication devices when they can get it for less than $50!

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=230112024124

This had been the last dream of the late Morton Warnow who believed that deaf people can and should communicate with the hearing people in English. We at Orange County Deaf Advocacy Center are proud to be the ones to live up his last dream of introducing face-to-face communication equipment that is hardly burdensome to obtain. We took over Morton Warnow's mission with the promise to live up his dream and we've succeeded!

And this is very strong and very powerful advocacy on our part.

Richard Roehm

Orange County Deaf Advocacy Center
http://www.deafadvocacy.org

Modern Deaf Communication
http://www.moderndeafcommunication.org

Response to Bobbie's "Move Forward" Vlog

While I applaud grandly at Bobbie’s enthusiasm to move forward.

I find this very premature at this point.

Much healing has to be done before we all can get together and move forward. many deaf advocates have been scarred permanently by the actions of people who represented ‘the powers that be’ in the deaf society.

They cant easily forgive and forget. They’re scarred.

Permanent scars include sourge damage, trashed reputation, stolen ideas, loss of funding, loss of grant support, loss of jobs, loss of prized posessions, loss of marriages, loss of homes, loss of the lives of their close associates, and loss of their own lives.

Healing has to be completed first before we all can get together first and move on forward.

I challenege Bobbie to come up with a real plan to begin the healing of the scars that have been caused by deaf people who held positions of trust in deaf organizations.

Until then, we cant move forward together.

Respectfully yours,
Richard Roehm

Deaf Awareness Education Campaign Starts Tonight

Tonight at the Orange County Largest Mixer, we begin our deaf awareness education campaign for this year. We'll start it off with a big bang!

We will be giving away almost $5,000 in prizes at our raffle. Business representatives will win one of the 10 TTY's and other deafness related accessories to reduce their risk of ADA lawsuits from the deaf community.

So tonight is the big night! And it begins our deaf awareness campaign that will include the Irvine School District next week, the Girl Scouts at the end of this month, and many more events later on.

It gets lighter, lighter, and lighter!

When I started this project, I was many many things at the same time. I wore many hats. The hats I had were office manager, peer counselor, advocate, fundraiser, treasurer, and educator. Over the 8 plus years, I was able to cultivate loyal volunteers who took responsibilities away from me and therefore I ended up being the fundraiser chair.

Finding and cultivating loyal volunteers was a big challenge as our agency was seen as a weed in someone elses territory. But I suceeded at that. And I had to weather a lot of interesting flak from our competitors who'd sometimes use our volunteers to try sabotage our agency a few times. I'm very happy I was born with my mother's thick skin. Not only that, we have a procedure for dealing with these scourges and they havent failed yet. That's something I cant share at this time.

What comes in the future is change and that will bring more challenges. Rather than marketing ourselves to the community we serve, we market ourselves to the community that also serves them and we're reaping the benefits from collaborations like this.

Basically we've gone from being a screaming access fighter to a dependable access provider and the economic benefits from doing so are thunderous. The society likes us better this way.

And the personal benefits is that I get to spend more time home, more time with my family, more time taking care of myself, and less time dealing with pressures of running a battleship.

Richard Roehm
CEO

OCDAC Newsletter February 25, 2007

Dear Friends,

The latest fundraising action by the Gallaudet University in connection with the Sorenson Language and Communication Center shows they're not getting the message from the deaf society that American Sign Language has a place in the future of deaf society.

The National Center on Disability and Access to Education has released tips and tools on web captioning last December. It is very important that deaf "vloggers" as video-bloggers make their messages accessible to the hearing society if they wish to demonstrate that American Sign Language has a place in the future of deaf society. If the deaf society wants the hearing society to appreciate American Sign Language, then they're going to have to include the hearing society in their audience by making their vlogs accessible to them. More information about web captioning down the newsletter.

We are excited to announce were getting a third heavy duty copy machine donated to us this coming Monday. This will enable us to mass produce deaf awareness and safety education materials. We can now put them up on our eBay store for others to get them and educate their local communities.

Deaf Awareness Education Booklets

Deaf Safety Education Booklets

Come join us for a special shopping day on May 11, 2007 at Community Shopping Day at Macy's South Coast Plaza. Tickets are $10 each and entitles ticket holders to a 15%-20% off of almost everything* at Macy's South Coast Plaza plus a chance to win a $500.00 Macy's shopping spree. Please see flyer and order form at http://www.deafadvocacy.org/events/MacysCSD2007.pdf for more information on the event and purchasing tickets.

We are getting ourselves ready for the big education campaign of 2007 with the kickoff at the Orange County Mixer in March.

To read the rest of the newsletter CLICK HERE