Monday Morning Deaf News and Coffee Roundup: This is a weekly roundup of national and international news articles about Deaf individuals and Deaf-related events and concepts. The aim is to give a slightly Deaf perspective on the journalism and story. In this issue: Good Deaf School News; Purple's new Board members; ADA updates - and the E-Bay situation, with a different take.

The coming of the Spring Equinox shows that not all Deaf School news is bad news. Fox News reports that Utah School for the Deaf and Blind have opened a state-of-the-art new campus for its population including preschool through high school. The New York Times reports that in the Gaza Strip, the Atfaluna Society for Deaf Children has begun vocational handcraft programs. And Hawai'i School for the Deaf had a pleasant experience on the 20th when volunteers dressed as elves from the Locations Foundation contributed a free and much-needed paint job (fourteen years of neglect erased in one day!) Similarly, Sekondi School for the Deaf in Ghana benefited from American generosity when a troop of soldiers donated time to refurbish the building and grounds. We were touched by a quote from one soldier, a New Yorker with a hearing impaired son:

"My son is hearing impaired," he said. "Someday he's going to see or read about what we're doing here and I want him to know that his dad was a part of it. I want him to be proud of his dad."

Deaf schools are givers as well as receivers of aid, however, as the Maryland School for the Deaf shows. Students held a fundraiser to aid the Instituit Montfort in Haiti (click here to find out how you can help!

Also out of Maryland: a bill to require that political advertisements be closed captioned. The bill is actually very fair, giving politicians the chance to also simply put a transcript on their website, but at least one politician has already changed their practices thanks to being informed of the need. And also on closed captioning: has the implementation of Google's Autocaptioning, which as we reported on March 8th is highly hit and miss, blocked a service that does? Bill Creswell reports that Youtube has blocked the reliable Overstream.net from overlaying captions on hundreds if not thousands of videos. There is no comment on Overstream.net's website.

Purple Communications, most recently noted for coming to a financial settlement with the FCC in which they admitted a debt of over 18 million, has appointed two new board members, Aaron Dobrinsky and Jose E. Feliciano.

The ADA continues to be an effective law, as a recent settlement in Florida shows. A deaf individual filed an ADA complaint with the Justice Department about the provision of auxuliary services and aids by HRB Businesses of Florida, Inc. The settlement required the company to provide sign language interpreters for all its services, create an effective communication policies, and provide staff training. There was also a small amount of financial compensation, plus a civil penalty.

In other ADA news, we eagerly await the results of a recent complaint filed by Melissa Earll of Missouri, who was prevented from using E-Bay. The online retailer wouldn't accept calls that weren't made directly. Articles including the Wall Street Journal state that E-Bay's actions in asking Deaf consumers to "get help" from other hearing people were demeaning. We would like to present a slightly different perspective. The company simply and illegally had no way for a deaf or hard of hearing person using relay or videophone to set up accounts, and worse, left such customers open for fraud, identity theft and identity takeover by encouraging them to give account information to other people. This is a common act by ignorant hearing retailers who probably believe innocently that nobody would defraud a Deaf individual. Unfortunately, as the writer T.C. Boyle shows in her amazing novel, Talk Talk, Deaf people too can be the victims of identity theft - and the results can be horrendous. The fact that a trusted "big name" is encouraging the disclosure of personal details to third parties can skew people's understanding of this issue and raises disturbing questions of ethics. Deaf people know this is common practice for many businesses; while hearing people are told to never give out social security numbers and other private bits of info, deaf people are often encouraged to grab the nearest person and trust in their goodwill.

Of Note: Should hearing people be banned, too? The Idaho Council for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing supports a ban on texting while driving - as long as the bill is expanded to include talking on cell phones, which he says is equally distracting and dangerous. We agree. Safety first; if you need to text, pull over at a convenient, scenic rest stop. Too many hearing and deaf lives have been lost due to texting.