News by Topic: Deaf Community

Despite restrictions due to the COVID-19 pandemic, students at RIT are still finding ways to participate in hundreds of clubs and organizations this semester, including dancing, designing games, and even skydiving.

RIT’s ROAR the Vote campaign is making it simple for RIT students to become engaged, educated voters this fall through registration drives and presidential election debate viewing parties.

RIT celebrates the 19th Amendment, equal rights, and the power of voting with “Moving Forward: Suffrage Past, Present, and Future.” The special programming includes talks, voter registration and pre-election events and exhibits.

Nearly 20 artists and groups from Rochester Institute of Technology are participating in this year’s KeyBank Rochester Fringe Festival @ Home, a 12-day virtual event beginning Tuesday and continuing through Sept. 26.

A recent study has shown that readers’ eye gaze behaviors are strong indicators of words that are unexpected, new, or difficult to understand. The study by Rain Bosworth, an assistant professor and researcher at NTID, explores the unknown qualities of gaze behavior for “sign watching” and how these are affected by a user’s language expertise and intelligibility of the sign input.  

Face coverings can make lip reading impossible and communication difficult for deaf and hard-of-hearing people. To help improve communication, RIT/NTID’s Center on Access Technology Lab has developed the TigerChat app.

Tiffany Panko, M.D., has been named director of the Deaf Health Laboratory in the Research Center on Culture and Language at NTID. Panko, an alumna of RIT who received support from NTID, earned her undergraduate degree in applied arts and sciences, with concentrations in premedical and psychological studies, in 2008. She earned her MBA from Saunders College of Business in 2009, and her medical degree from the University of Rochester School of Medicine and Dentistry in 2016.

Popular Science talks to Bernard Hurwitz, associate vice president for NTID Administration, about the benefits of see-through masks.

Friends and family of a beloved former staff member at NTID are honoring her memory with a new scholarship. The Stephanie Smith Albert Memorial Endowed Scholarship was created in memory of the college’s first director of Diversity and Inclusion, who passed away in 2018.

The Museum Association of New York talks to Tabitha Jacques, director of NTID's Dyer Arts Center, about how museums can accommodate people with disabilities as part of their reopening strategies.

Essay by Gerard Buckley, president of NTID and RIT vice president and dean, published by The Conversation.

The roles of some of the country’s leading Black Deaf artists will be discussed in a Zoom webinar on Saturday, July 25, sponsored by the Dyer Arts Center at NTID. The virtual panel discussion, “Respeck Our Black Deaf Arts,” will explore Black Deaf artists’ roles in the arts, what inspires them to create in response to the #BlackLivesMatter movement, and the national conversation about race, the future of the Black Deaf arts, and more.