Hello all,

Some of you may remember a brother from the list some time ago, Vic Llanes. 
Aside from his wife battling and winning the fight with Thyroid cancer 
fairly recently. They were up for candidates of a TV show called Extreme 
Makeover, where they take someone's house and either update or just 
completely tear it down and rebuild... no less. I don't think Vic would 
mind me sharing the below note...

Hello Brad,
I'm finally back online after a long time of being sequestered, I mean my 
family and myself. We have indeed been through the extreme makeover that I was
telling you that might happen and it did. We were sent to Disney world. I 
cannot talk about any details for now until our show has been aired so please
excuse me if I'm a little vague.  All I can say right now is that God is 
good, no matter what.
There are lots and lots of articles about us but this was one of the first 
to come out from a google search. If you care to try at google, just use these
as your keywords:
"bergenfield llanes extreme makeover"
Thanks so much for everything Brad.
always, Vic.
begin article
NJ.com's Printer-Friendly Page
Home makeover a welcome reality for blind, deaf family
Thursday, May 25, 2006
By KEVIN COUGHLIN
NEWHOUSE NEWS SERVICE
Cell-cams and iPods make life more fun. Every now and then, gadgets also 
make life better. A house in Bergenfield should be a prime example.
Yes, this involves reality TV. Still, it's a pretty safe bet that about 
$100,000 of donated technology that was installed for free earlier this month -
from talking thermostats to pulsating smoke alarms to specialized 
communications gear - will make a real difference for the home's blind and 
deaf occupants
once the camera crews vanish.
"The family was not disabled. The house was disabled. We're enabling the 
house," actress Marlee Matlin said May 8, as jackhammers jackhammered, tractors
tractored and a swarm of construction volunteers voluntarily constructed a 
new home for the Llanes family of Bergen County.
Matlin, who is deaf, will host a two-hour episode of "Extreme Makeover: 
Home Edition" to air on ABC in July.
The Llanes 50-year-old split- level house was small, dark, noisy and hard 
to navigate before volunteers demolished it over the weekend.
But obstacles are nothing new for this clan.
Blind from a hereditary disease, Vicente Llanes, 42, came from the 
Philippines in 1997 seeking medical treatment. His mother, Isabel, is 
blind. His wife,
Maria, a physical therapist, is battling thyroid cancer. Daughters Guenivir 
and Carrie are going blind from the same disease their father has, and teenage
son Zeb is deaf because his mother contracted German measles during pregnancy.
Recently, the show's producers told family members they were chosen from 
thousands of applicants and sent them to Walt Disney World while the house was
being rebuilt. On May 11, they returned to a home nearly twice as large as 
the 1,300-square-foot original, now dubbed a "Z Home" for its A- to-Z 
technology,
by Brian Stolar of the Pinnacle Companies, the Chatham builders overseeing 
the project.
There will be smoke sensors that give spoken warnings, a Braille printer 
that can be controlled wirelessly by computers throughout the house, and 
"iCommunicator"
software to convert speech into sign-language video clips - in real time.
A Hackensack company called GoAmerica is supplying BlackBerrys and a relay 
service, so Zeb Llanes (pronounced "Lee-ann-is") can communicate by phone with
his mom by sending text messages to an operator.
The handheld "Colorino" can scan and say the colors of clothes and other 
objects. Stevie Wonder used the device to tease visitors about their ethnicity
at a trade show, said Fran Hennelly of Independent Living Aids, a Long 
Island company on hand for a media preview.
Jon Gabry, a Kearny teen who is blind and deaf, showed off the BrailleNote, 
a keyboard that lets him type Web queries and then read the results in Braille.
Paired with a GPS satellite tracking device and mapping software, the 
BrailleNote can tell blind users exactly where they are, with directions to 
nearby
restaurants.
Home Automated Living has software called - what else? - HAL, to let the 
Llanes family program lighting, heating and security systems via 
microphones, telephones,
the TV or the Web. About the only thing HAL won't do, company President Tim 
Shriver said, is work with Apple computers. (Microsoft is among the project's
donors.)
Many people with disabilities "don't even know all this exists," said 
Joanne Castellano of Shrewsbury's Family Resources Associates, a training 
agency.
Some can't afford such technology, which doesn't benefit from the same 
cost-shrinking economies of scale as many consumer gadgets. Government aid 
often
is tied to employment, experts said.
Blind since birth, Richard Fox remembers typing school papers, only to be 
told later that the typewriter ribbon was shot.
"Some of this can make life tremendously easier," said Fox, who coaches the 
disabled for DeWitt & Associates of Midland Park. "But if you don't have a 
positive
attitude and confidence, (technology) won't help you, whether it's a 
typewriter or this other stuff."
The Llanes family should catch on fast. Vicente, a naturalized citizen, has 
designed software for the blind and digitized books for a nonprofit called 
BookShare.
Zeb also is computer savvy, and other family members are active with church 
and civic groups, according to publicists for the show.
"The most important thing is the Llaneses were a happy family before we got 
here, and they will be happier after we leave," said Matlin, an Oscar winner
for "Children of a Lesser God" in 1986.
© 2006  The Jersey Journal
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