Shirley Glassman doesn’t consider herself a couch potato, but she regularly watches CNN, FoxNews and local news broadcasts. The East Torresdale, PA resident, who lost most of her hearing from a childhood disease, uses closed-captioning to find out what’s going on in the world. Over the last several years, she has noticed obvious spelling mistakes, especially during live broadcasts like television news.

“It was annoying in the beginning”, Glassman said, “Then I focused on them in a more humorous light.” Recently she was watching a report about “Iraq Kiss.” It should have read “Iraqis”, she said.

Glassman, 77, keeps a notebook with her and jots down the more comical mistakes. She said, “it became an unexpected, interesting hobby.” Her new pastime has gained her attention from the Deaf community as well. For the last three years, Deaf Digest, a free Deaf news mailing list, has published the bloopers she found while watching TV. One of her Internet friends told the Deaf Digest editor about Glassman.

A few months ago, Signews, a new monthly national newspaper written by CSD of South Dakota, also asked her to send bloopers. The newspaper prints the bloopers in its humor section as a comic strip. No wonder her nickname is “the blooper lady.”

Glassman is a graduate of Gallaudet College (now University), the world’s only liberal arts university for the Deaf. She has taught sign language at numerous schools and colleges, including the Pennsylvania School for the Deaf, Holy Family University, the Philadelphia Museum of Art and other day and night schools including Northeast High School. Now retired, she still works as an editor. She was a consultant on the revision of a sign-language book in 1971 titled “A Basic Course in Manual Communication,” which was published by the National Association of the Deaf. She also helps proofread and edit the Hebrew Association of the Deaf (HAD) newsletter.

Glassman says she finds the majority of closed-captioning errors during live broadcasts. The reporters are talking so fast that the person typing the captions has a tough time catching up. Sometimes, she has found, entire words are missing. A few of the memorable mistakes she has caught include stewdents (students), eye sickles (icicles), Poke Knows (Poconos) and cereal killer (serial killer).

While many deaf people like Glassman can read lips and catch the mistakes in the closed captions, she explained that “lip reading isn’t one-hundred percent anyway,” especially when the person on TV is not facing the camera. Despite the mistakes made by captioners, closed captioning has opened the world of television to people in the Deaf community. Glassman’s husband, Leon commented, “For years, it was a tragedy for deaf people to watch TV and feel left out.”