Hi everyone from the BC-VRS Committee, sent at 11:45pm. Tuesday November 29th.
At tonight’s Vancouver Telus meeting, almost 200 people were in attendance.
Telus reported that over 76,000 calls were made through VRS, and it has been calculated that 390,000 minutes were tallied, which is about equivalent to 6500 hours of interpreting time.
32 % of the trial participants used VRS
66 % of the trial participants used the videophone to call other Deaf (vp to vp/deaf to deaf)
Tomorrow morning CityTV hopes to air the interviews with Lisa, the BC-VRS Committee’s Communication Officer, and three others regarding why VRS is important to us.. Its on channel 13 and may air at 6 am., anytime from/between, 6:30 a.m. up to 9 am then maybe at noon.. Ava Hawkins we thank you for providing interpreting on short notice. We hope we get air time!
At 10:00pm. Andrew Hopkins of News1130.com interviewed Lisa through the trial VRS and recorded her voice-interpreted interview to be on the radio at 11:00pm. tonight and repeated again the next day and the text and words versions would be made available online at www.News1130.com or made available through your Blackberry, iPod, or iPad News1130.com Apps.
Telus has been contacted by the media and they are expected to answer the media tomorrow.. So cross fingers we get on TV, provided no major drama news happens out there on world news, smile.
A special mention needs to be made many thanks for all your attendance tonight and all the work everyone who volunteered tonight.
To date, the BC VRS Petition Task Force has completed over 90 video testimonials(stories) from around B.C. and in the Lower Mainland, and numerous people took copies of the paper petitions to get other people to sign.
A special mention needs to be made – The committee wants to give thanks specifically to:
David Macdonald, John Warren, Jodi Birley, and Mike Kellett with videos and photography.
Russ Ward, and Dan LeCours for organizing the interview lines and preparing people.
Lisa Anderson-Kellett, for preparing people for their petition work, with video releases, etc.
Jodi Birley for managing the letter templates for CRTC, with her computer and a printer, personalizing the letters for peoples’ signatures.
Margo Pelkey for showing people where they needed to go and directing traffic and for the bunch of PENS for the petition-signing.
Russ Ward for passing out petitions and getting the table. Many signed the petitions available as they were laid out on a set up table outside of the Meeting Room.
Nigel Howard for the CRTC updates and communications.
Susan Masters for arranging interpreting for the interviews.
Thanks to everyone to your volunteer contribution of time tonight.
We also had a collection jar and there were lots of people who donated money to the jar. Thank you to the Deaf community for donating.
Thank you to you all who took a petition to help the quest to have if not hundreds but THOUSANDS of petition-signers to send CRTC a loud message that we want a Permanent VRS in Canada.
Go VRS GO !!
Have questions, need to contact BC-VRS Committee? E-mail address: bcvrsc@gmail.com
