Friday, November 12, 2010

MEDIA: TV APPEARANCE ON ATLANTA’S 57 WATC, Friends & Neighbors



I am excited to share with you that next Tuesday, November 16, at 12:00 noon, I will be appearing on Atlanta’s 57 WATC Friends & Neighbors. The episode will re-air on Saturday, November 20, at 8:30 A.M.

If you are not in the Atlanta area, the show will be streamed live on their website at to be given as soon as I have it.

Here is a description of Friends & Neighbors from the WATC TV website:

“Meet Sherry Tatum, Donna Ritchie and Kim Gravel and feel the warmth and love of friends coming together. Viewers will be educated and encouraged every week on Friends & Neighbors.”

I had a delightful time taping the show and could not believe how quickly the minutes flew by. They asked me what I wanted to talk about two minutes before Friends & Neighbors started, and I said, “I think I want to share my testimony.”


It was the first time I shared my testimony in a public setting. Totally unrehearsed, God filled me with His spirit; and Joy made an appearance at the end of the show.

I actually went out and bought a new dress and shoes with high heels. I won't admit how long it had been since I covered my legs in those expensive things that run. What do they call them? Oh, yeah. stockings! Just kidding, but it had been a LONG time since I bought a pair.

I hope you will tune in. I was much more relaxed taping this than I was the Animal Planet’s ”Monsters Inside Me” Shape Shifters episode.

The producer Gregory West was wonderful and the hosts were spirit-filled, women of God. Children of Dreams has given me a welcomed opportunity to share my faith about God’s love.

Tuesday, November 9, 2010

WILL THE REAL LORILYN ROBERTS PLEASE STAND UP TO FACEBOOK SECURITY ISSUES: Christian Blogger Lorilyn Roberts




Will the real Lorilyn Roberts please stand? I hope that's me. My Facebook page was copied by an impostor who wanted to be me. It's rather strange to see your picture and personal information being attributed to another person. Do I have a twin I don't know about? Am I still alive? Or am I losing my mind?


I admit I have a wee bit of curiosity as to who this other Lorilyn Roberts is. I wonder if she wants to pay my bills. Maybe she could solve all of my problems. I have enough issues to keep her so busy she won't have time to copy anybody else’s Facebook site. She can also feed my dogs and pamper my cats. Miss Impostor, if I weren’t a Christian, I would call you some other vile name that probably wouldn’t be found in a G-rated dictionary.

Facebook earns an “F” for their inability to deal with security issues. I wonder if they made any money off that recent movie. Maybe they could use the profits to invest in a phone line so victims like me can have a number to call and speak to a real person (not a fake). How about an email address? After all, it’s been five days since I filled out one of those help forms. In fact, I filled out multiple help forms.

Reminds me too much of the Washington bureaucrats’ healthcare plan. Did anybody ever read that thing? They probably took as little time to read that monstrosity as Facebook has taken to read my messages. Nilch!  Shoot, you give me access to that delete button and I will make that fake profile of Lorilyn Roberts disappear so fast you will think I am an alien with superpowers.

However, I do have the power of the written word at my disposal and I plan to use it to show the world how easy it is to be impersonated on Facebook; and did I use the word "inept" to describe Facebook’s quick response? Or how about lack of response? Good thing it’s just my reputation. Otherwise, I might hire a lawyer.

As a former court reporter, I have typed enough depositions that they fill my entire attic. Maybe I should dust off those old stenograph notes and find myself a good expensive attorney who will take Facebook to the cleaners and the fake Lorilyn Roberts to the brig. Maybe a few cents out of Facebook’s pocket might cause them to care about my time, my reputation, and my friends who have been harassed by this impostor.

And for those who happen upon my blog, don’t think you are immune. I am just an ordinary person living an ordinary life with an ordinary home doing an ordinary job. However, I do have extraordinary kids. But if someone would choose me to pick on, they could pick on you, too.

This scam artist used my picture, copied my profile, and contacted my friends representing herself (or him) to be me. This imposture duped eighty of my friends into becoming her friend. She sent messages to them on Facebook attempting to entice them to do something that nobody could figure out. Need a sampling? Here you go.

Agent Jean help deaf and hard of hearing in the state and I have get my money from them $50,000 real cash. They brought it down to my door step am really happy. wow!! thanks to Agent Jean deaf help, makes my life better. I saw your name on list of people getting money too, i saw it and i wonder if you get your money yet? 25 people get it here and i also see in deaf news paper too about your name. If you haven't get your money better contact,Agentjeanhelp@yahoo.com."

I actually did contact her on a specially-created Yahoo account for this devilish purpose. I would like to know who this other Lorilyn Roberts is who claims to be me, and this was her response:


Hello Lorilyn,
My name is Agent Jean Jose We have been waiting here online to talk to you I work for Federal Agency,We remember your Screen name on our list here and your money is available for you to claim, Let us know if you ready to claim the money and we Explain to you how we got your Screen name, You listen and read carefully.Am a Special Agent From the Obama help Organization.We recover the sum of $200,000,000(Two Hundred Million Dollars) from online scammers in the last 12 months. The Federal Government under the leadership of president Obama and the Nigerian government is giving out $50,000.00( fifty Thousand Dollars)To all Yahoo and AIM Sn was found on the scammers computer. And its apart of measure to stop scamming and to compensate those that their screen name was found on the scammers computer. We want to be sure we are giving the money to the right person. we want you to be honest with us in giving us the right information. When you done reading let me know.Congratulations, When you are done reading let us know so that you can claim your money.Thanks

While bringing the money to you at your home and i will like to know if you want a check or a cash money ... which one is preferable to you?

Alright, you will need to fill a form for security reason and where we will keep your info so we not going to send the money to Wrong person, are you ready to fill out the form now?

Postal or Home Address For Delivery *
Deaf or Hearing? *
Email
Text Phone *
Occupation *
Gender *
Age *
Do you want cash package or check (Cheque)?
Mobile phone #

Sorry, you ain’t getting one bit of personal information from me, you fool! May God have mercy on you. You will need it.

Sarcasm aside, I want the public to be made aware of this issue. Maybe I should contact the FBI, except they don't have an email address or phone number to call for complaints either. Does anybody care? I contacted two governmental watchdog groups for scams. I wonder if I will hear from them? Something tells me not to be optimistic.

In the meantime, I wage my public war with the pen. Perhaps the pen is mightier anyway. Who wants bad publicity, and if enough people complain somebody somewhere will do something. Justice usually prevails in the end. I am just impatient. I want it now, and I want this impostor caught and punished so she (or he) doesn't do this to anyone else.

I believe Facebook owes it to those who use its network and services to protect people's privacy and to respond in a prompt manner when security violations are reported.

Here is a screenshot of my impostor’s Facebook page.




It looks like my page, doesn’t it? Maybe she just liked my picture. Sorry, God made only one Lorilyn Roberts and that person happens to be me.

It’s been five days and Facebook has done nothing to remove this fake profile from their website, even after repeated notifications by myself and several of my friends.

If you want to help in a small way, leave a comment on my blog. Your comments will boost my placement on Google. Higher placement will increase the likelihood that someone who cares about these kinds of issues will see my blog. Hopefully, a Good Samaritan will help me to find justice in this preposterous situation.

Saturday, November 6, 2010

LORILYN INTERVIEWS BILL GRAHAM: Late-Deafened Adult Shares His Story


LORILYN: What is it like not to hear and live in a world of absolute silence? While I have spent the last twelve years providing closed-captioning for the deaf and hard-of-hearing, on a personal level, I had no idea what it meant to be deaf. As I see the degradation in caption quality due to pressures within the industry, I decided to do a little research. 

I wondered how poor captions would affect someone who relies on them to communicate, have access to information, and live a normal life. In the process, I met Bill Graham, a late-deafened adult. I asked him if he would be willing to share his personal story and his experience with closed-captioning. It was an eye-opener for me to get a “snapshot” into Bill’s life as someone who depends on television captioning every day.





LORILYN: Bill, thank you for taking a few minutes to talk with us. Were you born deaf?

BILL: No, I wasn't born deaf. I gradually lost my hearing, and by the time I was 25, I couldn't use the phone anymore. I consider that as the age I became deaf. I didn't know anyone who was deaf and I wouldn't admit to people, even friends, that I couldn't hear. I bluffed my way through life for years, lip-reading as well as I could and translating body language. Not surprisingly, this was very stressful. I began to learn sign language in my late 20s and tried to get involved with the Deaf community. I liked Deaf people a lot, except I couldn't understand their ASL. And I didn't fit in all that well with hard-of-hearing people either as assistive devices were useless for me. When I was 35, I co-founded the Association of Late-Deafened Adults (ALDA). People in ALDA share my experience of growing up hearing and becoming deaf as an adult. It can be a powerful bond.

LORILYN: Tell us about your family.

BILL: My wife Karen is CEO of SignOn, a sign language interpreting agency. She was a social worker when we met at a bowling benefit. I bowled over 200 so that qualified me for a date. Later Karen worked as a psychotherapist before co-founding SignOn. We adopted two children from the former Soviet Union: Eva, from the Republic of Georgia, now 14; and Tony, from Northwestern Russia, now 12. They're our darlings—the best reason we have for working and staying out of trouble. Everyone in my family is hearing except me—even the cat and two dogs.

LORILYN: Share with us a little about your life, your occupation, hobbies, or anything else that would be interesting.

BILL: I grew up in a blue-collar neighborhood on the South Side of Chicago. Like all my friends I did sports: baseball, basketball, tennis, golf, whatever. I played semi-pro baseball and was the most valuable player on my college team. Go, Bill! As I became deaf, I also became something of a loner. I threw parties and arranged happy hours, but I was always on the periphery, a personable mascot. After I learned sign language, I got involved with deaf activities. One of my favorites was Chicagoland Advocates for Signed Theater (CAST). A friend and I did a triathlon to raise money for CAST; the four-day Border-to-Border Triathlon from the southwestern corner of Minnesota to the Boundary Waters at the northern border, consisting of 435 miles of biking, 50 miles of running, and 50 miles of canoeing. I was in shape back then.

As a single guy, I took most of my vacations by bike. Once I took a train to Kansas City and biked back to Chicago; every day was in the 90s with high humidity. I don't recommend it. I did ten or 11 marathons and many regular triathlons.

ALDA didn't just come into my life. it dominated it for years. But I was a lucky duck; the organization identified a new segment of the deaf/hoh world—late-deafened adults; and I got a lot more attention than I deserved along the way. I was named to numerous disability-related national boards: VITAC's Captioned Viewer Advisory Panel, Lighthouse International, the National Court Reporters Foundation, the Gallaudet University Board of Trustees, and others. I was profiled in the book Great Deaf Americans...it was quite a ride.

My entire professional career has been in publishing. I was an editor at The World Book Encyclopedia for 18 years and served as Managing Editor of Microsoft Encarta Encyclopedia for 12 years. I got laid off last year and after a year of scrambling as an editorial consultant, I decided to get back into the disability world on a professional basis. My first gig is a part-time position as Director of Advocacy and Education with Alternative Communication Services (ACS), a CART/captioning company. I'm having a great time, and there's so much to do: educating organizations about the need for realtime captioning is an endless and formidable job....hopefully, soon it won’t be!

LORILYN: Do you use captions?

BILL: I’m not sure I would have been successful without captioning. I know for sure ALDA never would have thrived without CART—for deafened adults, communication is a special challenge; some of us lip-read, some of us sign, some of us hear with cochlear implants, and some of us do none of the above. The only way for us all to communicate together is through realtime captioning. CART is the cornerstone of ALDA. At work, I’ve used remote CART a heckuva lot of times. Once when I had a meeting in Dublin, Denise Phipps realtimed the meeting from Nevada; she worked from 2 a.m. well through the morning. Pretty cool (for me). At Microsoft, I helped drive the inclusion of closed captions in Encarta, the first multimedia reference product to have captioning. What would I have done without captioning? Oh, I dunno, but surely something else.

LORILYN: If you had a chance to tell the FCC what captions mean to you, what would you tell them?

BILL: I would tell them what I’ve told you here: Captioning has been an essential, critical, and irreplaceable tool in my success on the job and in my family life. Without captioning, I probably wouldn’t watch television with my wife and kids. That would make our family room a family room minus one. I don’t want to be left out. I was a mascot long enough.

👂👂👂👂


SCAG (Standards Captioning Action Group) hopes to reach 20,000 signatures on the “Petition to the FCC to Mandate a Standard for Television Captioning.” Your signature will encourage the FCC to institute a minimum standard to ensure quality captioning in the future. Thank you for making a difference. To sign (it only takes seconds), go to http://www.thepetitionsite.com/3/so-that-the-deaf-may-hear-it-is-written/


LorilynRoberts.com










Tuesday, November 2, 2010

CLOSED CAPTIONING: “AARP, The Closed-Captioning Question,” by Broadcast Captioner Lorilyn Roberts




Letter to AARP
Will They Encourage Members to Sign the Petition to

“Mandate a Caption Standard for Television Programming?”

Dear Sir,

How many AARP members are hard of hearing? According to the website http://ihcrp.georgetown.edu/agingsociety/pdfs/hearing.pdf, up to 43 percent of the population over 65 suffer from hearing loss. Twelve percent of the population is over 65 and that translates into four million Americans. And because AARP considers anyone over 50 to be "old," adjusted conservatively down to 55 years, these figures would probably double to eight million Americans who have hearing impairments.

Today I received this email from a friend a mine:

"I signed the petition. Alvin and I watch TV with captioning all the time. Even with the volume turned up, sometimes it is difficult to understand the dialog. And some captioning is awful! Thanks, Carol."

I have been a closed captioner for television for twelve years and I want you to know that the state of television captioning today is frightening -- both for me personally as a professional and for the future of those who rely on them for a healthy lifestyle. What few people realize is that newer but inferior technology is on the verge of replacing steno captioners.

Most reputable companies are being forced to bid below the current quality of service which they have been providing for years. They are losing contracts to companies promising the same level of service, but the truth is, they can't duplicate what a trained captioner can do. By the time television stations realize they made a mistake, those steno captioners will be gone -- to CART, court reporting, and other business endeavors where there is job security and they aren't forced to accept the steep pay cuts.

Most captioners provide captioning because they love what they do and want to help the hearing-impaired, but I can't and others can't continue to take the pay cuts to compete with an inferior product. As the old saying goes, "you get what you pay for."

The result: A disaster is on the horizon for the aging population. If you think you see poor captions now, you haven' seen anything yet.

Because I am captioner, I know what is happening. To do something about this, I have started a petition to the FCC to mandate minimum captioning standards. By establishing a standard, it will halt the downward spiral and protect millions of senior citizens.

AARP is the most prestigious organization representing the elderly population. As a result, I hope AARP will help play a vital role in protecting the rights of seniors to quality captioning. The American with Disabilities Act without the minimum standard is no longer sufficient. We live in a very different economic climate today. Unless a minimum captioning standard is added, captioning companies will continue to pursue the inferior technologies -- why should they opt for quality when it's not mandated in the Act? Because of the tough economic climate, television stations unfortunately are believing the lies that these new technologies are as good. They aren't!

Please go to this link and read the petition that will be delivered to the FCC. Urge your readership and members to sign it. We need 20,000 signatures to make our voice heard . The petition to "Mandate a Caption Standard for Television Programming" will expire in six months. We must do it today before it's too late.

http://www.thepetitionsite.com/3/so-that-the-deaf-may-hear-it-is-written.

Again, let's ensure that the elderly population and hearing-challenged will have quality captions into the future. Older citizens who have given so much to our country deserve access to the same information as the rest of us. I hope AARP will help them now before it's too late.

Sincerely,
Lorilyn Roberts
Standards Captioning Action Group, also known as SCAG

Saturday, October 30, 2010

CLOSED CAPTIONING: “Mandate a Caption Standard for Television Programming,” by Broadcast Captioner Lorilyn Roberts


Recently I have seen degradation in caption quality as many providers have sought ways to cut costs, oftentimes through the use of unqualified captioners and inferior technologies.

The only way to reverse this trend and ensure quality captioning in the future is to establish a minimum captioning standard.

As the population in our country ages, the need for captions will become increasingly important for those over 65 who may develop hearing loss.

We are a nation of immigrants, foreigners, and naturalized citizens who rely on captions to communicate and receive vital information.

A significant portion of the population, perhaps as high as eight percent, is hard-of-hearing or functionally deaf.

Captions are used by school-age children to help bolster reading skills.

Many restaurants, motels, and public places display captions as part of the ambiance of the establishment.

As a result, captions play an important role in the lives of many. They are vital for disseminating information related to news, weather, sports, entertainment, and national security. Captions enable hearing-challenged individuals to live a healthy lifestyle.

We need a minimum standard to ensure that quality captions are not compromised by inferior methods, technical issues, or incompetent providers that undermine the integrity of the Americans with Disabilities Act.

I ask that you seriously consider signing this petition which I started to ask the Federal Communications Commission to establish a minimum captioning standard. The petition requests the FCC require all live local programming to meet a standard of 97.5 percent and 99 percent accuracy for national and international programming. Please click on the link and it will take you to the site where you can add your name to the petition. It only takes seconds. Promote Caption Standard for Television Programming:

You can view and sign this petition at:
http://www.thepetitionsite.com/3/so-that-the-deaf-may-hear-it-is-written/.

In addition to preserving caption quality, you will also save the jobs of highly-skilled captioners (like myself) who are at risk of being replaced by voice-recognition computers that deliver an inferior product to the end-user; and who knows, but that end-user someday may be you or someone you love.