Legislation that could require parents of blind or deaf children to pay additional school fees is causing a stir amongst advocates for those with special needs.

A federal investigator has concluded that Lake County schools violated the rights of a hearing-impaired teacher who lost his job after the district refused to provide him the equipment he needed to compensate for his disability

Federal authorities say Beverly Hospital has agreed to a three-year program to improve its services for hearing-impaired patients and patients’ family members.

A deaf University of Kentucky football season ticket holder is suing the school, seeking to force the Wildcats to put closed-captioning on the scoreboards at Commonwealth Stadium.

Cinemark, the nation’s third-largest movie chain, said Tuesday it will install closed-captioning equipment for the deaf and hard-of-hearing in all its theaters in California by mid-2012,settling a disability-rights lawsuit in Alameda County.

A Pennsylvania man with hearing loss who aspires to a career in law enforcement has dropped his federal lawsuit against state police over guidelines that he said excluded qualified candidates who need hearing aids.

He received the e-mail only a few weeks ago, but already Christopher Caulfield has big plans for the missive.

Kathleen Nosek, the Sheffield special-ed teach whose grievance I’ve been writing about, was suspended with pay this afternoon as a direct result of my visit to her classroom on Tuesday. I filed the story tonight and you can read it in today’s paper.

Blind and deaf consumers, who have fought to make home phones and television more accessible, say they are being left behind on the Web and many mobile devices. Touch-based smartphone screens confound blind people who rely on buttons and raised type. Web video means little to the deaf without captioning.

“Def” has been a part of hip-hop lexicon since the early 1980s, but for Sean Forbes, it means something different. The 28-year-old from suburban Detroit has been deaf since he was a baby but says that hasn’t stopped him from making music. He recently released a new single called “I’m Deaf,” and is busy recording more songs for an upcoming album. Forbes says music has always been part of his life.