This week I'm going to refer you to a post by my friend and colleague Shari Eberts: A New Take on the Audiogram Designed by Someone with Hearing Loss. Her post is about Jay Alan Zimmerman's new way of measuring hearing. He calls it the Hearing Visualizer. Jay's idea is brilliant, simple, and emphasizes the … Continue reading Seeing Hearing Loss
“Crip Camp”: When Disability Rights Became Civil Rights
Last July I wrote about the 30th anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act, signed into law by President George Bush in July 1990. I wrote about how dramatically it changed life for people with disabilities, and how fortunate I felt to be a beneficiary of this act. My post was called What the ADA … Continue reading “Crip Camp”: When Disability Rights Became Civil Rights
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The Return of Social Anxiety?
Tips for Post-Pandemic Life. On the one-year anniversary of the World Health Organization’s declaration of Covid as a pandemic, we are beginning to see the light ahead. Vaccine numbers are soaring, restaurants are offering indoor dining, people are traveling. Pandemic “pods” are expanding to include more than the two or three friends or family that … Continue reading The Return of Social Anxiety?
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Stigma: Why It’s So Hard to Talk About Hearing Loss
This week the World Health Organization asked me to speak at the launch of their global Report on Hearing. The audience, from all over the world via Zoom, were primarily hearing professionals and public health experts whose work is about hearing loss but who don’t have it themselves. I was asked to speak about my … Continue reading Stigma: Why It’s So Hard to Talk About Hearing Loss
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On World Hearing Day, A Joyful Song and a Somber Accounting.
World Hearing Day celebrates hearing, but it also is an opportunity to remind ourselves that hearing is easy to lose and hard to get back.
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Defining Disability
Do I have a disability? It depends on when you ask. If I am alone at home with no noise except my breathing and quiet tapping on the computer keyboard, and I’m wearing my hearing aid and cochlear implant, then No, I don’t. Or at least I don’t perceive the disability. If the phone rings … Continue reading Defining Disability
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When Seeing is Hearing
Isolation isn't conducive to writing about communication difficulties. Since communication difficulties are what this blog is about, I haven't written much in recent months. I'm getting along just fine with no one to talk to. I’m hearing well. Or at least I feel like I’m hearing well. But that’s because everything I hear – the … Continue reading When Seeing is Hearing
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A Question About Sound
If a tree falls and I’m not wearing my hearing aids, does it make a sound? One morning last week I was sitting at the kitchen table drinking coffee when I noticed something odd out the window. We have a large, old, beautiful and very decrepit barn. From where I was sitting, a tree trunk … Continue reading A Question About Sound
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What the ADA Means to Me
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 … Continue reading What the ADA Means to Me
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Heroes with Hearing Loss
This Memorial Day, there will be very few parades to celebrate our veterans. But it's a good time to remind ourselves of the toll that war takes on hearing. When we think about the injuries our servicemen and -women endure, we focus on major life-changing injuries like Traumatic Brain Injury and Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. We worry about suicide in veterans. … Continue reading Heroes with Hearing Loss
Katherine Bouton: Smart Hearing 