YONA DIAMOND DANSKY, M.Ed., Temple University
Caption*Lit Founder and Owner
yona@captionlit.com

Yona Diamond Dansky has had over 25 years experience as an educator working with deaf and hard of hearing people in the Philadelphia area. She is an advisory board member of the Center for Community and Professional Services, a division of PA School for the Deaf. In the late 80s, she obtained a multiyear grant from a private foundation to insure that each of the 75 deaf and hard of hearing students who attended Abraham Lincoln High School in Philadelphia had telecaptioning devices at home and that decoders were present throughout the school, which has a student body of over 2,000. Yona has produced numerous original educational videotapes. She has presented at national and international conferences and written articles for several publications.

For many years Yona has been aware of the great educational benefits captioning can provide, and has developed projects which capitalize on these benefits, with a focus on enhancing literacy skills. To prepare, Yona attended training on the captioning process at The Caption Center in Boston.

Yona collaborated on a grant proposal to purchase equipment so that deaf high school students could write and add captions to original videotapes of their interviews with deaf adults. She established CaptionLink, an expanding captioning service at Abraham Lincoln High School. Students add open captions to instructional videotapes for use in the classroom as well as provide this service to the larger community. They are trained and supervised as they participate in this community service project for which they earn graduation credit.

Yona is currently working with schools to enhance the use of captioning to foster literacy skills for all populations. She is developing a course for educators based on research provided by the National Captioning Institute and other sources.

GARY GARB, M.S., Rutgers University
Caption*Lit Webmaster, Technical Consultant, and Captioner

Gary Garb retired from a 35 year career in the computing field. He has managed software engineering projects, trained software engineers and managers in development methodologies, and was Director of Computer Security for a major international corporation. He has taught computer science in several universities at the graduate and undergraduate levels. In recent years, he has developed and maintained several major web sites.

Gary has trained with Yona Diamond Dansky as a captioner.

RACHEL GARB, M.Ed., Harvard University
Caption*Lit Multimedia and Artistic Consultant

Rachel Garb is a multimedia developer in Silicon Valley. She holds a B.S. from Carnegie Mellon University where she specialized in Technical Writing and Multimedia Design. She has worked for several major companies as a multimedia producer. Her M.Ed. from Harvard, including courses in the MIT Media Lab, was focused on educational applications.