Serving
San Diegans Affected by Hearing Loss
Hearing Loss Network
Information
and Services for Hard of Hearing and Late-Deafened People, and their Families
and Friends
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Serving
San Diegans Affected by Hearing Loss
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Hearing Loss Network |
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Information
and Services for Hard of Hearing and Late-Deafened People, and their Families
and Friends
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Combined Monthly Meeting with HLAA - 2010 People sometimes ask me which are good meetings for a new person to attend, and I always give the same reply - the next one! We realize that it's often hard to attend your first meeting, but we promise you'll be happy you did. And if you put it off, when you finally do attend you'll be kicking your self for all the great meetings you could have attended, but didn't. As you can see in the following schedule we do a variety of things throughout the year. But we always make sure to allow time to socialize; we believe that getting to know others with hearing loss is the single best thing a person with hearing loss can do for herself! We had a very interesting and informative meeting today as Nanci Linke-Ellis presented on captioning in various venues and some related topics. We also had announcements of some new social opportunities, and, of course, the usual opportunities for folks to chat. Nanci discussed her long involvement in captioning advocacy, dating back to 1993, when she first started working making captioned films available. She walked us through the evolution of analog movie captioning and discussed the current efforts to provide captioning for the evolving digital format, and even presented the idea that the day may come when captioning will be available at every showing in every theater! She also discussed some current legal actions that appear to bode very well for greater movie caption availability in the fairly near future. The case currently being considered in the 9th Circuit Court is especially significant, because that decision will establish precedent for the entire circuit, which comprises much of the Western US. Nanci then moved on to discuss captioning for live theater, which is where she is currently expending much of her efforts. She discussed the fact that people with hearing loss have a legal right to live theater captions, if that is what is required for the production to be accessible, and she noted that the first step is to request captioning for a performance you would like to attend. The theater is not required to caption every performance, and may choose to provide a captioned performance on a different day than you requested. She also talked about the CaptionFish website (www.captionfish.com), which locates captioned movies for the location you provide, and about the three young deaf techies who created the site and run it in their spare time! It was a very interesting presentation with lots of questions and comments from the audience! We reconvened after
a break to hear about a plethora of upcoming social opportunities, including: Watch for emails about
these opportunities from the activity leaders. Greetings all! Well, I have to say that yesterday's meeting was memorable in more ways than one. We had a number of unexpected challenges, including getting access to our (substitute) room almost half an hour after our scheduled start and a problem with our captioning equipment. Fortunately, we were able to overcome all these challenges and had a wonderful meeting. The other good news is that we had a record turnout! Bill counted over 40 people, which I think is the most we've ever had! Our guest speaker was Dawna Mills, Au.D., CCC-A. Dawna is the Director of the Adult Cochlear Implant Program at the House Ear Clinic, and her topic was "Cochlear Implants in Adults: A review of Candidacy & A Technology Update". It was a very interesting and informative meeting, with lots of questions from the audience. As an extra, added attraction, we had five Au.D. candidates from the SDSU audiology program in attendance, and had some very interesting discussions with them. Each of them will be interviewing one of our members as part of their coursework for the current semester. And we had our usual social time, coffee and lots of goodies. I must have eaten six or eight cookies all by myself! ;-) Happy Spring to All! The official arrival of spring coincided almost exactly with the start of our meeting today, and the weather certainly cooperated! Hope everyone has a chance to get out and enjoy it today. Our guest speaker today was Jonathan Lowe of the San Diego Police Department, and he spoke on "Identity Theft". This is a large and growing problem in the US, so Jonathan's talk was timely and important. He gave us a lot of wonderful information on how people steal identities and how to avoid being a victim. Most importantly, he gave us specific things we can do to protect ourselves! At the end of his presentation, he took a few minutes to talk about the census. He encouraged everyone to fill out the form that arrived in the mail; if people don't fill it out, someone from the Census will have to visit them to get the information. And he closed with some information about the Alert San Diego program, which allows people to register for various ways of being contacted in the event of an emergency. Visit www.readysandiego.org if you'd like to register for notification via cell phone, pager or email. And we had our usual social time, coffee and lots of goodies. Bill and I competed to see who could eat the most cookies! I think I won, but he may disagree! Hi All! We had another great meeting today, with not one, but TWO, guest speakers! Our main speaker today was Ron Jacobs, who spoke about vocational rehabilitation, and how it works and doesn't work for people with hearing loss. We had lots of questions and discussion, and I think everyone learned a lot! I guess the bottom line is that how much vocational rehabilitation does for a particular person often depends on how much the person advocates for him/herself. Ron concluded his presentation by talking about how much people with hearing loss benefit from vocational rehabilitation compared to other folks who use those services. We were pleased to learn that people who are hard of hearing generally get through the process faster, with less cost, and with a higher success rate than many others. Following Ron's presentation we took a break for lots of tempting goodies and chatting, and then we reconvened for several announcements. - Our first annual garage sale will be next Saturday at Char and Larry's house. The entire development has a garage sale every spring and it is very well attended, so should be a great turnout. Thanks to everyone who donated items, and we'll send an email with information on the sale for those who want to stop by. - Our next walk will be next Sunday, April 25, at Mission Bay. Look for an email with all the details. - Our next meetup will be Saturday, May 8, and we'll send an email with all the details about that. Next we had a short presentation by Mitchell Levy of Hamilton Relay. He described several different versions of captioned telephones, including the Model 200, the Model 800i, and WebCapTel. After hearing about these systems, we decided that we could really benefit from a demonstration of the various equipment, so we'll arrange that for a future meeting. Hugs to everyone, PS Char got stuck working a lot the last week and wasn't able to get the newsletter finished ;-( We had an interesting and enlightening meeting today, with not one, but TWO, Mary Clarks to speak to us. The first speaker was “California Mary Clark”, who is President of HLAA-California. She spoke about some of the things the state organization is doing to support the chapters, including a leaders gathering in August to discuss ways for chapters to increase collaboration. Then “Chicago Mary Clark” presented on “Turning lemons into lemonade”. Mary spoke with a lot of passion about some of the hearing loss related challenges in her life, and she soon had many audience members contributing their stories and observations. We had a very heartfelt discussion, and I believe that we all felt a little better about ourselves when we finished. We had
another of our wonderful discussion groups, this one led by Joan Padilla
and Anne Herman. Those who have never had the opportunity to participate
in a discussion of hearing loss issues with other folks with hearing loss
really can't understand how powerful and empowering these discussions
can be. They're always a favorite among our members! Bill and Marilyn gave us a tour of the Internet, with special emphasis on hearing loss sights. Particularly interesting, of course, were the the home page and Facebook page of the HLAA-San Diego group. Oh, and I hope everyone noted the cool technology that allowed them to access the internet using the cellular network, rather than a more traditional wired or Wifi interface! We will NOT meet in August this year! We will have our Annual Picnic and BBQ at the September meeting. We have a variety of acivities in addition to some wonderful food. It seems like the weather always cooperates for this event, and we are able to play outside, as well as inside! The holidays can be a very difficult and stressful time for people with hearing loss, because it's often very difficult to understand what people are saying at holiday gatherings. At the October meeting we'll learn some of the strategies we can use to make this a more enjoyable and less stressful time. We will have our Thanksgiving Potluck in November! This is always a great meeting, with lots of wonderful food and lots of time to chat. We will have our Holiday Celebration, White Elephant gift exchange and CAROLING! If you've never participated in a White Elephant gift exchange you've been missing an exciting new experience! And if you haven't heard this group sing, you're REALLY missing something.! Those who have attended our holiday celebrations in the past know to turn off their hearing aids , bring earplugs, or do whatever else they can do to protect themselves from the truly horrible sounds we produce ;-) Oh, yeah, and lots of holiday goodies! |
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