Emergency Planning for People with Hearing Loss
There is a growing awareness that people with hearing loss
are not adequately considered in systems of emergency planning. We
have long been aware that emergency
television captioning is often inadequate, but it now seems that the
issue is much more pervasive than that!
December 2004 - DHHCAN has released a
report which outlines some of the issues with providing emergency
communication to people with hearing loss.
January 2005
- Do places of public accommodation have an obligation to
include plans for people with disabilities in their emergency planning?
January 2005 - Oklahoma is giving visual
smoke alarms to people with hearing loss. Here's Cheryl Heppner's
report.
February 2005 - One of the best ways to ensure that
emergency centers can communicate with people with hearing loss is to
support communications using text messaging. Here's an
article about text access to emergency services in the UK.
March 2005 - Lawsuit declares that
emergency planning for places of public accommodation must include
provisions for the disabled.
April 2005 - The National Council on
Disabilities identifies deficiencies in emergency planning for people
with disabilities and recommends solutions.
May 2005 - Here's
our report on Randy Collins' wonderful Emergency Planning workshop, as
presented at the 2005 Western Symposium on Deafness.
June 2005 - Here's a look at how the folks
in Washington DC are handling emergency preparedness for people with
disabilities.
September 2005 -
National
Council on Disability Calls for Federal Disability Recovery Plan in
Response to Hurricane Katrina
September 2005 - TDI
has some great fact sheets on a variety of emergency situations and
resources at:
www.tdi-online.org/tdi/emergencypreparedness/nationalresources.htm
September 2005 - Here's
a report on a planned upgrade to the emergency warning system that
includes notification to phones and pagers!
September 2005 - Boston's
WGBH has just announced a program to improve emergency information
accessibility to people with hearing loss.
October 2005 - The
National Organization on Disability post-Katrina report states that
people with hearing loss were the most underserved of the disability
community!
December 2005 - In
response to the dismal treatment that people with disabilities
experienced in our recent emergencies, Senator Tom Harkin is calling for
emergency planners to do a better job of including planning for people
with disabilities.
November 2005 -
Interested in getting realtime emergency information directly to your
computer? Here's Dana Mulvany with her thoughts on
how to do it.
December 2005 - What's
the best way for authorities to communicate with people with hearing
loss in an emergency? It just might be captioned radio!
January 2006 - Last
year's hurricanes along the southeastern coast of the
United States
highlighted how fragile and woefully outdated the emergency
communications system in this country has become. Now some experts who
are building and maintaining 911 networks believe that upgrading
emergency systems to Internet Protocol technology could make them
hardier and more reliable. Full
Story
January 2006 - How
cool is this? Here are the presentations from the "Accessible
Emergency Notification and Communication: State of the Science"
Conference on the Internet. And they're CAPTIONED! Here
they are!
February
2006 - Emergency preparedness for people with disabilities is in
the news, and rightfully so! Here's a report on
Cheryl Heppner's presentation at the 2005 TDI Conference.
March 2006 - Here's Cheryl Heppner's
report on an FCC panel discussion on communications issues during
Hurricane Katrina.
April 2006 - Deaf
couple worries: We can't hear sirens
April
2006 - Waking
Effectiveness of Various Alarms
April 2006 - Emergency Planning
Conference Materials Available Online
June 2006 - Getting TV Information in
Emergencies
July 2006 - System to Send Emergency
Alerts to Wireless Devices
August 2006 - Access Board
Information Meeting on Communication Access
August 2006 - Hurricane Katrina, One
Year Later: Independent Panel Recommendations
August 2006 - Emergency
Preparedness and You
September 2006 - Hard of
Hearing Israelis in Wartime
November 2006 - DC TV Station Fined
for Emergency Captioning Violation
January 2006 - The
FCC has clarified the August 2006 public notice, which appeared to relax
emergency captioning requirements.
May 2007 - A Night at the 9-1-1 Center
June 2007 - FCC Addresses Emergency
Communication Concerns
August 2007 - Smoke Alarms and
Adults who are Hard of Hearing
August 2007 -
Current Smoke Alarms Unable to Wake Millions of Hard of
Hearing People
August 2007 -
Free Captioned Emergency Preparedness Videos Online
August 2007 -
Do You Have A Hearing Loss? - Are You Prepared for
Severe Weather?
June 2008 - New and Emerging Technologies 911
Improvement Act
Aug 2008 - TTY Users Need Not Pre-Register for
Reverse 911
Oct 2008 - Access Board Advisory Committee
Presents Report on Vessel Alarm Systems
December 2009 - Improved Emergency Warning
System Promises Texting Improvements
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
September 2005
The recent hurricane emergencies have put the spotlight on all sorts
of emergency planning and preparation issues, including how to notify
people that an emergency is imminent. Such notification has
traditionally been done by television and radio; "Broadcasting
& Cable" is reporting that the Feds are designing an expanded
system (called IPAWS - Integrated Public Alert Warning System) that can
transmit emergency alerts to cell phones, PDAs, and computers.
Officials from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and
other government offices plan to have the system backbone in place by
fall of 2006, but are unwilling to predict when the system would be
fully operational.
The FCC is currently studying whether changes to existing
telecommunications rules will be required before the system is
implemented. They are also debating the extent to which participation in
IPAWS should be mandatory.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
On October
5, 2005 Congress reported on findings of the four Special Needs
Assessment for Katrina Evacuees (SNAKE) teams sent to Louisiana,
Mississippi, Alabama and Houston, Texas after hurricane Katrina. The
National Organization on Disability attended the briefing and produced a
report that documents the availability of services to people with
disabilities in the aftermath of Katrina. It's probably no surprise to
those familiar with the hearing loss community that its members were
provided the LEAST access.
The NOD
report states on pages 8 - 9:
"The
most underserved group were those who are deaf or heard of hearing.
Less than 30% of shelters had access to American Sign Language
interpreters, 80% did not have TTY's, and 60% did not have TVs with open
caption capability. Only
56% of shelters had areas where oral announcements were posted so people
who are deaf, hard of hearing or out of hearing range could go to a
specified area to get or read the content of announcements.
This meant that the deaf or hard of hearing had no access to the
vital flow of information."
Here's
the full NOD report.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
April
2006
"What
if I'm sleeping?" Andrea DeBold wondered last week. "What if
I'm taking a nap? I wouldn't know anything was happening" if the
Indian Point nuclear power plant blew its top. For the audibly engaged
in the lower Hudson Valley, news of nuclear disaster would first come by
way of siren. There's one not far from the DeBolds' Harriman home, near
the Woodbury Common Premium Outlets on Route 17. But for hundreds of
hard-of-hearing residents like the DeBolds, a radiological release at
Indian Point would fall on deaf ears. Full
Story
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
April
2006
Do
you feel safe sleeping in a hotel room with only a standard audible
smoke alarm? Would you feel better if the room had a low frequency
alarm? How about a strobe light? If you answered "Yes" to any
of these questions, please read this great paper on the effectiveness of
various types of alarms for people with hearing loss! Thanks to bhNEWS
for the lead on this article! Full
Story
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
August
2006
Here's an outstanding and comprehensive document that covers pretty much
everything you need to know about emergency planning as a person with
hearing loss. It was written by Lise Hamlin and originally appeared in
the May/June 2006 issue of Hearing Loss Magazine.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
August 2007
According to the July 2007 study, "Waking
Effectiveness of Alarms for Adults who are Hard of Hearing," the typical
audible signal used by smoke alarms failed to wake up 43% of tested
subjects with mild to moderately severe hearing loss despite the fact that
all were able to hear the 3,100 Hz tone when awake. Strobe lights woke up
only 27% of the hard of hearing subjects. In contrast, a specific audible
multiple frequency signal consisting of a 520 Hz square wave successfully
alerted 92% of the subjects at the benchmark level of 75 dBA and alerted
100% at 95 dBA. The study, authored by Dorothy Bruck and Ian Thomas of
Victoria University, Australia, estimated at least 34.5 million people in
the United States have partial hearing loss and projected that this number
would increase due to the aging of the Baby Boomer generation.
Full Story
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Editor: I haven't seen these, but it sounds like a great idea. If you
check them out, please let me know what you think of them. Thanks to NVRC
for this information!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Some new goodies have arrived just in time for September and National
Preparedness Month! The U.S. Department of Homeland Security, in
partnership with The Advertising Council, has made four instructional
videos on emergency preparedness available on the Internet. They are:
Older Americans Video (5 minutes)
Ready Pets Video (5 minutes)
Americans with Disabilities Video (5 minutes)
Ready America's Instructional Videos (3 minutes)
The videos are in English and Spanish, and they are all captioned.
Click on the box beneath the video, on the right side, to start the
captions. You may have to download the latest Adobe Flash player software
to view the captions.
You can also download a transcript to print and read or share with
others.
Find the videos at:
http://www.ready.gov/america/about/instructional.html
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
August 2007
Unfortunately, all of these warning systems rely
on sound cues to alert listeners of the impending danger, leaving
residents who are hard of hearing without access to alerts - and without
that all important, critical time to react appropriately to the warnings.
The fact is that hearing impaired citizens are more likely to make
unfortunate decisions in emergency situations due to a lack of information
concerning the nature and extent of the danger. What makes this situation
even worse is that the technology exists to make sure that people who are
hard of hearing receive warnings, know about emergencies and know how to
respond to the danger. The problem is, many broadcasters and emergency
management officials ignore these technological advances due to factors of
cost, implementation or the lack of awareness that these warning
techniques exist.
Full Story
