California man invents tools for people deaf and hard of hearing, looks to bring them to Florida

TAMPA, Fla. - Deaf Awareness Month is celebrated in September as a time to raise awareness of the needs of people who are deaf or hard of hearing.

Florida has a large deaf and hard of hearing population, with over 800,000 people in the state. More than 340,000 of those people live in the Tampa Bay area.

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That's why one man and his team are working to bring several accessibility tools to places like local beaches, hotels, stadiums and amusement parks.

At an A-D-A event held in St. Pete over the summer, Randy Dean had the opportunity to network with local business owners, leaders and even law enforcement, demonstrating how they could benefit from services provided through SeaMe Systems, a company Randy founded himself, and traveled from his home state of California, to showcase.

"SeaMe Systems is a consultative service and business, and our focus is to address the accessibility needs [of] disadvantaged communities," Dean told FOX 13.

The birth of his company was sparked by personal experience. Randy’s children, Ashli Dean and Randy "Steven" Dean, Jr. are both hard of hearing and so are two of his grandchildren. 

"As they grew up, I found that a lot of deaf people don't or are reluctant to go to beaches or public spaces because they don't have access to information in real time like many other people, especially in emergency situations," Dean added. 

That's why Randy ended up creating a Beach Emergency Evacuation Lights System - otherwise known as BEELS.

"The BEELS system is designed to provide emergency alert notifications in places like beaches, parks, lakes, public lakes, amusement parks," Dean explained. "It's designed to operate with a combination of lights and audio speakers, and the lights are programmed so that they can actually flash in their set sequence so that deaf people can understand what is happening in real time and then evacuate."

These prove to be beneficial in situations like shark sightings or rip currents. It was enough for California’s Office of Emergency Services to endorse BEELS and recommend it to all counties in the Golden State.

But that wasn't the end of his mission to help the DHH community. He then got to work on creating other accessibility tools like Video Remote Interpreting (VRI). 

"Most hotels that I've gone to don't have anything in place to really assist them with addressing the needs and communicating with deaf and hard of hearing people," Dean added. "Even law enforcement doesn't always have those tools available to have an interpreter immediately available."

After both tools saw great success in Los Angeles County and across California, Randy set his eyes on expanding to other states where they could be beneficial, like Florida.

He specifically set his eye on Orlando and Tampa. 

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"Tampa Bay is part of a major tourism, location, very famous and popular destination for a lot of guests who come from out of state and out of the out of the guests who come, a lot of them are deaf as well," said Dean. 

To get the ball rolling, he recruited a longtime friend and Clearwater Psychologist, Tracy Daniels, to represent the SeaMe team in the Sunshine State.

"We know the things that are set up for people that are blind or in a wheelchair, but this is an invisible disability where you're only going to know it if you start talking to them," Daniels stressed. "To me, that's why it's so important, because currently, I believe they're not getting the services that they need, because there's not a need that's being pushed forth and that's why it's important that we begin to target organizations to be able to set up these things." 

As the duo works to get these services on Florida beaches, college campuses, amusement parks and businesses, they've also earned the support of leaders in the Deaf and hard of hearing community, like Calvin Britt, president of the Florida Association of the Deaf. 

Calvin Britt

"I was getting ready to, you know, roll up my sleeves and get this to the state of Florida," Britt told FOX 13. "That's something that, you know, we look forward to … for every beach in the state of Florida to have something like that."

Calvin advised that it will be a lengthy process to get BEELS on beaches, but he's already got a plan in mind. 

"We're looking at Saint Augustine as the first location for this," Britt added. "Just to, you know, show the success of and how effective it is and then use that to present to other entities." 

He says it's his duty...to improve accessibility - and a resource like this could be vital. 

Randy has since worked on getting interactive kiosks in public spaces, as well.

They use AI technology and video recordings to provide info like directions, schedules, or amenities at hotels to people who are deaf or hard of hearing. 

If you'd like to learn more or are interested in getting some of these tools for your business, click here.