Activity Record
What International Deaf Emergency has actually done, with a date on every entry and a document or public record behind it.
We are a small organization asking people to fund work they cannot see happening. The least we owe them is a page they can check without taking our word for anything.
How to read this page
Every entry names a dated act and points at something you can open without asking us: a document we host, a government docket, a public registry, an archived release. Where the underlying document is restricted and cannot be published, the entry says so and says why, rather than being left off.
This page records only work that is finished. Nothing here is a plan, an intention, or something in progress. If it is on this page, it has already happened and you can go and check it.
2026
- Speaking
Proposed a session for the EENA 2027 conference of the European Emergency Number Association
A presentation proposal, “One rhythm, three senses: public warning that reaches Deaf, DeafBlind and hard of hearing people”, submitted to the EENA 2027 call for presentations in the public warning and community preparedness track. It sets out how much of United States public warning still travels as sound, presents the Three Senses Alerting Standard, and shows what any public warning system can reuse from it at no cost.
Why there is no document here: A conference proposal is not published by the organiser unless it is accepted. We record the fact and date of the submission; the programme is EENA's to announce.
- Memberships
Joined the European Emergency Number Association as an affiliate member
EENA approved International Deaf Emergency's application to its Affiliate Members Network on 9 October 2026. EENA is the Brussels-based non-governmental organisation that brings together emergency services, public authorities, researchers and industry around emergency communications in Europe, including the 112 number and public warning.
- Regulatory
Filed reply comments with the United States FCC on alerting modernization
A twenty-six page reply in PS Docket Nos. 15-91, 15-94 and 25-224, with a sworn declaration. It reviews the forty-three comments filed in the round and shows that none opposes IDE's four proposals: alerting that does not depend on hearing, with graded touch and light signals standardized across devices; symbols validated with Deaf and DeafBlind participants before they are mandated; an affirmative, authenticated and accessible all-clear that reaches DeafBlind recipients; and photosensitivity safety limits on every flash feature. It answers New York City Emergency Management's concern, places the United States Geological Survey's own device-behaviour findings on the record, and asks for a rule that says what a receiver must do when a message fails authentication. The reply was completed on 28 September and filed on 8 October with a request for acceptance of a late filing, which the Commission may grant for good cause.
- Speaking
Presented “Alerts for All” at the 2026 CAP Implementation Workshop
Item 3.15 of the 2026 Common Alerting Protocol Implementation Workshop, hosted in Birmingham, England, by the U.K. Environment Agency, OASIS Open and Alert-Hub.Org, and followed remotely by Zoom webinar. “Alerts for All: making CAP alerts accessible at the source” is about what the people who write alerts can do inside CAP itself, so that a warning reaches Deaf, DeafBlind and hard of hearing people. Emmanuel Jacq presented in sign language, as a pre-recorded video with an English voice-over and open subtitles.
- Regulatory
Submitted a written comment to the FCC Consumer and Public Accessibility Advisory Committee on visual and haptic alerting patterns for Wireless Emergency Alerts
A written comment for the Committee's Advancements in Accessible Communications Technologies Working Group, following its 4th meeting (DA 26-820). It asks the Working Group to recommend that the Committee's next term take up standardized, event-specific visual and haptic alerting patterns for Wireless Emergency Alerts, so that the alert channel itself is accessible and not only its audio, and offers the Three Senses Alerting Standard, its reference implementation and conformance tests to that work at no cost.
Why there is no document here: Submitted by e-mail to the Committee's mailbox on 17 September 2026; the Committee publishes no comment docket.
- Regulatory
Filed a Paperwork Reduction Act comment with the United States Office of Management and Budget on FEMA's THIRA/SPR Unified Reporting Tool
A comment on OMB Control Number 1660-0131, the information collection behind FEMA's Threat and Hazard Identification and Risk Assessment and Stakeholder Preparedness Review reporting tool. Filed on the federal register of regulatory review on 17 September 2026, ahead of the 21 September close.
- Regulatory
Filed a Paperwork Reduction Act comment with the United States Office of Management and Budget on the U.S. Access Board's online Architectural Barriers Act complaint form
A comment on OMB Control Number 3014-0012, the information collection behind the online form through which more than 90 percent of Architectural Barriers Act complaints reach the Access Board. It asks that the disability-specific filing instruction offer nonvoice routes and relay services, that the burden estimate be explained for the revised multi-page form, and that the revised form's error, focus and page-transition states be tested with assistive technology. Filed on the federal register of regulatory review ahead of the 17 September close.
- Funding
Selected for a grant by the Digital Infrastructure Insights Fund
The Digital Infrastructure Insights Fund (D//F) selected IDE's question, “Where does the open public-warning stack stop being open?”, as one of the projects of its final open call, with a grant of USD 5,000. The grant funds an exploratory report and a summary blog post on the accessible, non-auditory rendering layer of the Common Alerting Protocol, IPAWS and Wireless Emergency Alerts: who maintains it, under what mandate, and where responsibility for it is absent.
- Agreements
Received IDE's own credentials for the FEMA IPAWS test lab
Under the memorandum of agreement completed in August, the FEMA IPAWS program issued International Deaf Emergency its own digital certificate for the IPAWS staging and test environment, after assigning it a lab account on 3 September. This lets IDE test accessible alerts in the IPAWS test environment, at the source, and not only on the public alert feeds.
Why there is no document here: Lab credentials are security material and are never published. We publish the fact and the date. IDE is not a FEMA partner, vendor or alert originator, and does not claim any endorsement.
- Regulatory
Filed a Paperwork Reduction Act comment with the United States Office of Management and Budget on the transition from TTY to real-time text
A comment on OMB Control Number 3060-1248, the information collection behind the FCC's TTY to real-time text transition and its 911 consumer notices, in CG Docket No. 16-145 and GN Docket No. 15-178. It supports approval and asks for no new report and no new filing from any provider. It makes four asks of the supporting statement rather than of respondents. The statement records that no party has sought a TTY waiver since the last approval, yet assigns the 911 customer-notice burden to all 608 wireless providers, and 37,696 of the 70,528 annual hours to a notice limb whose respondents the same statement says do not exist; both cannot describe the same population. Its accessible-format guidance names Braille and captioned, audio-described ASL video, but its estimates disaggregate not one hour for producing them. The required notice lists text-based alternatives to 911 without naming real-time text, the technology the proceeding exists to introduce. And machine-readable electronic text, compatible with screen readers and refreshable braille displays, is not among the named accessible formats, which leaves DeafBlind consumers without a route. International Deaf Emergency offered to develop a model consumer notice and accessible-format package at no cost, which any provider including a small one could adopt as it stands.
- Regulatory
Filed a Paperwork Reduction Act comment with the United States FCC on the accessibility of televised emergency information
A comment on OMB Control Number 3060-0967, the information collection behind the FCC's rules on accessible emergency information on television (47 CFR 79.2, 79.105 and 79.106), submitted to the Commission's Paperwork Reduction Act mailbox on 15 September 2026, ahead of the 25 September close.
Why there is no document here: Submitted by e-mail to the FCC's PRA mailbox, as the notice directs; the notice itself is at 91 FR 46915 (27 July 2026).
- Regulatory
Filed a written ex parte presentation with the United States FCC on American Sign Language alert templates
A four page filing in PS Docket Nos. 15-91, 15-94 and 25-224, made under paragraph 42 of the Bureau's multilingual alerting order, DA 25-12, which invited community organizations to petition the Bureau with specific suggestions on the templates. Its position is that American Sign Language should keep the footing the order gave it: no template, guidance, test or compliance date issued for the written languages without its ASL counterpart at the same time and to the same standard. It asks the Bureau to confirm that any template adopted later comes with a concurrent ASL version signed by a Certified Deaf Interpreter on the same implementation schedule; to complete its deferred consideration and adopt an all-clear template; to consider the further candidates already in the record, including those the Deaf community proposed; and to set a date for revisiting the feasibility of fillable ASL templates. The document is a tagged, accessible PDF.
- Regulatory
Submitted comment to the National Weather Service on the transition to CAP
The National Weather Service proposes to make the Common Alerting Protocol its primary format for watches, warnings and advisories and to retire the VTEC format, and invited initial comment through 21 September 2026 on Public Information Statement 26-62. IDE supports the transition and asked for one enhancement when the list for future CAP messages is drafted: an agreed convention for referencing sign-language video in the CAP resource block, which CAP 1.2 already carries structurally, so that a downstream application can recognise a sign-language resource and present it rather than treat it as an unlabelled attachment. It is a naming and profile question, not a schema change, and it costs the message no size and no new element. IDE also asked NWS to confirm that the CAP path reaches every audience the VTEC path reached, including NOAA Weather Radio and the services built on it, and volunteered for the webinar that follows the comment period.
- Regulatory
Submitted feedback to the European Commission on the Digital Networks Act
IDE's first filing in an EU proceeding: public feedback submitted through the Commission's Have Your Say portal on the Digital Networks Act proposal, COM(2026)311. It asks the DNA to preserve the European Electronic Communications Code's Article 109 (equivalent access to emergency services) and Article 110 (public warnings), and to make accessible warning presentation an explicit requirement: attention signals carried through complementary visual, tactile and audible channels; the full message, hazard and recommended action, available in accessible formats including refreshable Braille support; open interoperable specifications for accessible presentation; and verifiable accessibility, with published test criteria and testing that includes people with disabilities. Reception is not communication, and a warning must reach the person, not just the device.
- Regulatory
Filed reply comments with the United States FCC on direct video calling to 911
An eight page reply in the Commission's Next Generation 911 proceeding, PS Docket Nos. 21-479 and 13-75, filed five days ahead of the deadline. It shows that no commenter opposes direct video calling to 911 on the merits and that the record converges on a Commission-sponsored, voluntary pilot; answers the argument that better relay-interpreter training could substitute for calling 911 in one's own language; and names four gaps no other filing addressed: DeafBlind access, the tactile channel, what happens to a video call on a failing network, and how accessibility applications should read 911 readiness data. It also asks for two protections IDE would be bound by itself: native 911 access must never require enrollment in any application, including IDE's own, and a caller must be able to withhold video whenever video would endanger them. The document is tagged for screen readers.
- United Nations
Submission to the UN thematic study marking twenty years of the Convention
Input to the annual thematic study of the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, under Human Rights Council resolution 61/9, on twenty years of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. It argues that accessible emergency information is the Convention's unfinished business: that warning systems still assume a working sense the recipient may not have, that no system we know signals the end of an emergency accessibly, and that DeafBlind people are excluded by construction wherever a design offers only sight or only sound. Stakeholder contributions are published by OHCHR before the Human Rights Council's sixty-fourth session.
- Regulatory
Filed formal comments with the United States FCC on alerting modernization
A twenty-one page comment in the Commission's proceeding on modernizing the nation's alerting systems, PS Docket Nos. 15-91, 15-94 and 25-224. It argues that accessibility obligations attach to the attention layer of a public warning and to the signal that an emergency has ended, not only to the words of the alert, and that DeafBlind people must be named expressly in alerting rules because a system designed for visual or audio access excludes them by construction. The document is tagged for screen readers.
- Software
Merged the code for offline FCC ASL alert videos into the Deaflare app
Deaflare, IDE's alerting app, gained the code to download the eighteen American Sign Language template videos adopted by the FCC for Wireless Emergency Alerts and to show them from an alert without a network connection. Each video explains the type of alert, never the specific message. Deaflare is in testing; the official FCC ASL videos are being added, so the feature is not yet showing them.
Why there is no document here: The Deaflare source code is private while the app is in testing, so the change itself cannot be linked. The page above describes the app.
- Agreements
Memorandum of agreement with the FEMA IPAWS program completed
All parties signed an agreement with the United States FEMA Integrated Public Alert and Warning System program, covering development and interoperability testing of accessible alerting tooling. This lets IDE work directly against the national alert feeds that its application redistributes.
Why there is no document here: The agreement itself is a For Official Use Only document. We publish the fact that it was signed and its date; we do not publish, quote or attach the document. IDE is not a FEMA partner, vendor or alert originator, and does not claim any endorsement.
- United Nations
Submission to the UN Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities
A contribution on article 11 of the Convention, which covers persons with disabilities in situations of risk and humanitarian emergencies, sent to the Committee's secretariat, which acknowledged receipt the same day. It proposes treaty language requiring that a public warning reach people through a channel they can actually perceive, and that the end of an emergency be signalled as deliberately as its beginning.
- United Nations
Introduced the Three Senses work to the IASC Disability Reference Group
IDE is a member of the Inter-Agency Standing Committee Disability Reference Group, the humanitarian system's standing mechanism on disability inclusion. We circulated a plain-language introduction to the alerting standard to its co-chairs, offering it to the group's stocktake of the IASC Guidelines on Inclusion of Persons with Disabilities in Humanitarian Action.
- Speaking
Presented at the World Federation of the Deaf webinar on disaster risk reduction
Emmanuel Jacq spoke as a panelist at the WFD webinar on disaster risk reduction for Deaf communities, on “Designing Deaf-first disaster warnings: moving public alerting from audio-first to visual, haptic, and sign language.” IDE is an international member of the World Federation of the Deaf.
- Standards
Published the Three Senses Alerting Standard, free for anyone to implement
A specification for carrying the meaning of an emergency alert across sight, touch and sound, so that a person is not dependent on a channel they cannot perceive. The specification text, a machine-readable vocabulary, a software library and a conformance test suite are all public. It is publicly available and royalty-free: there is no membership, no fee, and no permission to ask. Every release is archived with a citable DOI.
- Agreements
Partnership with the World Federation of the Deaf put on a formal footing
IDE is an international member of the World Federation of the Deaf, the global body for national Deaf associations, which holds UN ECOSOC consultative status. The two organisations agreed to put their emergency work for deaf communities on one footing rather than running it in parallel. We publish the fact of the partnership; the terms between the two organisations are not published.
Why there is no document here: The detailed terms are a matter between the two organizations and are not published. We publish the fact that the agreement was signed and its date. IDE claims no WFD endorsement of its own programs beyond the international membership it already holds.
- Standards
IDE's Haiti response published as a case study in an international humanitarian standard
The Humanitarian Inclusion Standards for Older People and People with Disabilities, published by the Age and Disability Consortium under the ADCAP programme, carry IDE's Haiti earthquake work as a case study, “Building an inclusive camp in Haiti”, sourced to International Deaf Emergency by name. It records what IDE did when two million people were displaced and Deaf people were last to learn about food, water and shelter: status reports and news updates in sign language, the tools to learn signing for those who could not sign, solar street lighting in the camps so Deaf people could keep communicating after sundown, Deaf professionals brought in on invitation to deliver emergency relief and preparation, nutrition and health, inclusive education, human rights and job training, and roles for Deaf people in the recovery itself, building shelters, collecting wood and distributing small business development tools to families. Every other entry on this page is a document IDE sent; this is a document another organisation chose to publish about IDE. Separately, Emmanuel Jacq sat on the Review Group that guided the whole revision, as one of three International Disability Alliance representatives; that was a seat held for IDA, not for IDE.
Before 2026
IDE has worked with Deaf communities in disasters since 2010. That older work predates this record and is documented in our field reports rather than in public dockets.
- Founded in 2010 after the Haiti earthquake by Emmanuel Jacq, a Deaf French diplomat.
- 160+ homes built for Deaf families displaced by the Haiti earthquake.
- 400+ people trained in disaster risk reduction across three continents.
- Work in Haiti, Nepal and across Africa, with partnerships in 18+ countries.
- 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, EIN 27-3191911.
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