SWC March 2008 Newsletter

Computers have definitely opened up my life to meeting those who share the same hearing loss as I do. Many years ago, in the pre-computer age, I knew no one with a hearing loss. However, I did know many Deaf/deaf people in their respective communities. It wasn't easy being a woman or a man with a hearing loss back in the 70s or even 80s, let alone the 60s. It wasn't as if we got on the telephone or opened up the Yellow Pages searching under the header "hearing-loss" or "support groups" and, BINGO, we hit right on what we were looking for. Since I became more and more involved with the computer, I have found my niche in the SayWhatClub. I hit on it the day I opened up Hearing Health magazine.

The past few months online have been very interesting. Technology is changing faster than the speed of light and has given us the ability to communicate with people across the oceans within seconds. When chat boards were popular, it seemed foreign but now there's Second Life where real people live through their avatar to meet others. They sit, chat, shop and even have job interviews for real life and buy homes for their avatars. Elsewhere, people write journals and diaries on blogs for all to see and comment on. Others portray their anger, happiness and events on Video blogs. It's not a new thing, but it's all avant-garde, even to me sometimes.

What this has done for us is open doors to learning, and learning about other people. Blogging has been the "in thing" for some time now. We can learn a lot about communities and individuals from their blogs. I was recently surprised to find out that the British share many of the same problems we have with hearing-aid prices and vendors, that the wait list for Cochlear Implants is very long in several countries and that we in the U.S. and Canada have many more choices open to us than other countries do.

With the help of computers, parents and grandparents, uncles and aunts can all be savvier and find out anything they ever wanted to know. Parents have no reason for not understanding hearing loss and deafness any more. And for those who don't have computers, the libraries have always provided them. I recently found out that if you live near a college, you can get a "community" ID or something similar and make use of the computers for free at the college library.

Most recently, I came across something that will open our world. For me, telephone conversations were my lifeline in spite of my hearing loss until the invention of the computer. As my word recognition decreased, telephone calls became increasingly hard to handle. I was discouraged at work because speaking on the telephone with clients while ten other people were working in the same room was not easy for me emotionally and physically. However, Sprint has come up with something so advanced it just blew me away when I tried it. And the cost is merely the cost of a phone call. Imagine making a call to a good friend and everything you can or cannot hear comes up on your screen in captions. Right on your computer screen in real time. Its the next best thing to the invention of the wheel. I have nothing but praise for Sprint and I hope you'll be as excited by the new technology coming our way as I am. The web site can be found at: http://www.sprintrelay.com/web_captel.htm

My point is that, not only have computers and technology matured, but we as hearing loss individuals are really going to benefit from technology's growth. We all come of age when we learn new things. I hope this issue of SWC Online Voices helps all of us quench our thirst for knowledge, even if just a little. As far as I'm concerned, we never stop learning and that, to me, is important. Learning and growing and feeling ageless!