I often turned off my hearing aids while in the middle of something that caused them to squeal as I had them turned all the way up. It wasn’t until I got digital hearing aids that I could stop topping out on the volume. In 7th grade science, we did a lab where we looked …
Category: The D Life
Elementary Signing and Lipreading
I was blessed that I didn’t stand out too much during my public school years. Kids who made fun of me did it in a joking way that was no different than making fun of my religion. In fact, they probably made fun of my religion more than my deafness. They often said, “Jesus loves …
Understanding the Deaf
This insightful story from a Nigerian publication addresses the two different broad types of deafness: prelingual (deaf before speaking) and postlingual (deaf after speaking). Unfortunately, there’s a bad typo in the article. “Dead” instead of “deaf” as well as a few errors. In spite of these mistakes, it’s still worth reading. While growing up, a …
Cell Phone Bluetooth Ear Pieces
I like them cell phone bluetooth ear pieces. They make my implant less weird-looking. Is that good grammar? Those things are more noticeable than my implant. Boy, I remember hardly ever wearing my hair up because I didn’t want people staring at my ugly beige hearing aids. Now I wear my hair up almost all …
Captioned Media Program
Resources available in captioned media talks about the Caption Media Program (CMP), a great program that ofers free loans of open captioned programs. The program now offers Internet streaming videos and currently has over 1000 videos. I love this part because finding online captioned media is like the needle in haystack thing. I just finished …
Deaf in Developing Countries
This story breaks your heart and makes me thankful I’m an American. The treatment of deaf children in developing countries doesn’t surprise me.
Online Customer Service
Carter Bloodcare rules. I donate blood on a regular basis, or try to anyway. Carter makes it easy to set up an appointment as it can be done online. The donation appointment form, however, doesn’t play nice with Firefox. No biggie. I’d rather use IE than to navigate a recording to schedule an appointment. You …
Audism: A Name for Deaf Prejudice and Wrong Assumptions
Alicia mentioned audism in a recent comment and it was the first I heard of the word. Audism, like racism and sexism, is discrimination against deaf people. Wikipedia provides examples of audism: Deaf people cannot write well because they are deaf or because English is not their first language. Deaf people cannot be successful without …
Gallaudet President Extreme Makeover
Ah, it’s good to laugh about the whole thing with this hilarious comic of Gallaudet President Jane K. Fernandes (affectionally known as JKF… OK, so it’s a shortcut not an affection) receiving an Extreme Makeover comic from Dan McClintock’s Cartoon Blogs. More good stuff. Thanks to Alicia Lane for the pointer.
University Isn't Accommodating Enough
Yesterday, the kid who wanted to play baseball. Today, the students who want an education. Deaf Students File Lawsuit Against USU. Suddenly, I feel like we’ve jumped back in time. I graduated college over 10 years ago (yikes!) and even then, American University (AU) had an office for students with disabilities. I spent my freshman …