From the New York Times:

Producers have cast a 10-year-old with a vision impairment as the understudy for the role of Helen Keller in the upcoming production of “The Miracle Worker” on Broadway. The production had drawn criticism last month for casting a non-disabled star actress, Abigail Breslin, in the role.

In response to advocates’ protests, lead producer David Richenthal launched a nationwide search to find a deaf or blind actress to work as Breslin’s understudy. With the help of the Alliance for Inclusion in the Arts, he found Kyra Ynez Siegel of Eugene, Ore., who lost most of the vision in her right eye after an accident.

Mr. Richenthal has also decided to offer audio and caption devices, known as D-Scriptive and I-Caption, free to blind, low-vision, deaf or hard-of-hearing audience members. The technology, which cost the production about $30,000, is in line with an effort by some Broadway producers to start offering such help to audience members.

See also:

Eugene girl wins Broadway understudy role — AP/Oregonian

(New York Times photo)

From the San Francisco Chronicle (with video), New York Times, BBC:

Google has announced a plan to use speech recognition technology to automatically bring text captions to millions of YouTube videos, making them accessible to people with hearing impairments and making them more searchable.

Analysts expect the change to open the videos to a wider foreign market and potentially make them more profitable.

Engineer Ken Harrenstein, who helped develop the translation  system, said it was imperfect but “will continue to improve with time.” Harrenstein, who is deaf, said in a Google blog that the majority of user-generated content on Youtube has been inaccessible to “people like me.’

From the New York Times:

A group of disability advocates has sharply criticized the casting of Oscar-nominated child star Abigail Breslin (“Little Miss Sunshine”) for the role of Helen Keller in this winter’s Broadway revival  of “The Miracle Worker.” The Alliance for Inclusion in the Arts says the role should have been given to an actor who is blind or deaf.

Producer David Richenthal said that casting a star as Helen was essential to securing a $3 million investment for a commercial production, and that his research did not turn up any well-known young actresses who were deaf or blind. He said he would consider casting a deaf or blind actress as Breslin’s understudy.

Ina Fried writes on CNET that T-Mobile Sidekick data problems over the past couple of weeks have been “particularly rough” on deaf users who are among the most loyal fans of the device.

Deaf users say the Sidekick had been a lifeline, allowing them to keep in contact with friends and family and to communicate in an emergency.

Lisa Gault, a deaf Sidekick owner in Katy, Texas, said the outage “really put the deaf community at more of a disadvantage — more so than for hearing people, since we’re so reliant on e-mail (devices) to keep in touch.”

(CNET photo)

From the Washington Post, AP/Newsday:

Gallaudet University students welcomed the announcement of T. Alan Hurwitz as the school’s new president this weekend with a round of signed applause. Hurwitz, who will take over in January, is currently the president of the National Technical Institute for the Deaf, a college of Rochester Institute of Technology in Rochester, N.Y.

The response was markedly different from the student protests that erupted three years ago when the school’s board selected Jane K. Fernandes as president. More than 100 students were arrested as they occupied the administration building, barricaded the gates of the school, and burned the new president in effigy.

Fernandes was criticized for her management style and for not learning sign language until she was an adult; the school was criticized for a selection process that was closed to students and faculty.

(RIT photo from the Washington Post)

From the New York Times:

When playwright Rebecca Gilman adapted “The Heart is a Lonely Hunter” for the stage, she changed a key element of the Carson McCullers novel, giving speeches to a character who is deaf and mute throughout the book. The change makes it difficult for a deaf actor to play the role.

Now that the play is being produced in New York, deaf actors and deaf theater groups are protesting the artistic and casting choices behind the character of John Singer. A coalition of groups has asked that Henry Stram, the hearing actor who is playing the part, be replaced by a deaf actor.

“A hearing actor playing a deaf character is tantamount to putting a white actor in blackface,” said Linda Bove, a deaf actress and board member of the Alliance for Inclusion in the Arts, an advocacy group for minority, disabled and deaf artists.

Director Doug Hughes said he would not fire Stram but was sympathetic to the deaf actors’ concerns. He offered to work with them on a future project.

(Photo from the New York Times)

From the Chattanooga Times Free Press, with video:

Actress Marlee Matlin challenged an audience at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga to face their challenges with courage and humor.

Matlin, the first deaf actress to win an Academy Award, has also appeared on popular TV shows like “Spin City” “Desperate Housewives,” “My Name is Earl,” “Seinfeld” and “The West Wing.” Her appearance was part of the school’s recognition of Disability Awareness Month.

Over the years, she learned that being deaf can only cut you off from relationships and aspirations if you let it.

“I relish the challenges I face every day,” she said. “The real handicap of the deaf lies not in the ear but in the mind.”