katherinebouton.com - Smart Hearing | Strategies, Skills, and Resources for Living Better with Hearing Loss

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Description: Strategies, Skills, and Resources for Living Better with Hearing Loss

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30 years ago this week, George H. W. Bush signed the Americans with Disabilities Act, which had been passed by a bipartisan Congress. Change for people with visible disabilities came quickly. Curb cuts became the norm, and allowed people in wheelchairs to cross the street. Wheelchair ramps aided not just wheelchair users but people with strollers or walkers. Braille became standard on public signage. Every governor and mayor had an ASL interpreter at his or her side when speaking in public.

Less easily or quickly addressed was the invisible disability of hearing loss. It is thanks to Rocky Stone, the founder of the Hearing Loss Association of America (then called SHHH), that hearing loss was included in the list of disabilities covered. One essential accommodation — in my opinion the most important for people with hearing loss — was the development of CART captioning. This photo shows one of my early experiences with it, speaking to a hearing-loss group.

On the 20th anniversary of the ADA, ten long years ago, I had recently quit my much loved job as an editor at The New York Times. I couldn’t hear well enough to manage the many meetings and phone calls and other requirements of the job. I could have asked to be transferred to a position which would not have required so much public and workplace interaction, but I was worn out from many years of trying to keep up. The obstacles seemed insurmountable. The technology was not very good.

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