education access for people with hearing loss
Access to education is not a simple thing for a person
with hearing loss. Because of the great diversity of communication
situations in an educational environment, providing access is a complex
and evolving problem. Providing access to hard of hearing, late
deafened, and oral deaf persons in this environment has only
recently been recognized as a problem that requires a solution.
One
promising effort has been the collaboration between the Northeast
Technical Assistance Center (NETAC), located at the National Technical
Institute for the Deaf (NTID) at Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT)
in Rochester, N.Y., and Self Help for Hard of Hearing People, Inc.
(SHHH), based in Bethesda, Md. They have recently announced training
materials and classes that address providing access for hard-of-hearing
students at postsecondary institutions. Read more about this effort
here.
Even with all the accommodations that are starting to be provided for
people with hearing loss, taking classes in a normal fashion is still
TOUGH! Taking a class online might be considerably easier, especially if
the online class has been designed for deaf and hard of hearing
students.
The folks at NTID have done exactly that, and invite you to consider
their Distance Learning Program.
An ongoing issue reported by people with hearing loss is their
inability to take advantage of standard training opportunities. This
seems to be especially true for technical subjects with new and complex
vocabulary, e.g. computers. NTID has just announced computer hardware
and software courses that are restricted to participants
with hearing loss. The first courses will be presented this
winter/spring, with more to follow. This looks like a great opportunity
for those of you who work in this field (or want to).
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April 2013 - Legal Case Casts Light on
Accessibility Issues in Medical Education
October 2012 - UM Professors Discuss Their
Hearing Loss
March 2012 - Parents of hearing-impaired student
sue high school after expulsion
February 2012 - AG Bell
Files Amicus Brief Supporting CART Interpreting for Students who
are Deaf and Hard of Hearing
January 2012 - Medical Billing Training
Available for People with Hearing Loss
September 2010 - Deaf
Education: Changed by cochlear implantation?
July 2010 -
From Mouth
to Ear: Acoustic Architecture, Assistive Listening Devices and
New Room Acoustical Standards
September 2009 - BHI Urges Teachers
to Help Children with Unaddressed Hearing Loss
April 2009 - Standard Available for
Improved Acoustics in Classrooms
November 2008 - Researchers Discover HOH
Students Underserved
October 2008 - A Place to Learn: How
Architecture Affects Hearing and Learning
July 2008 -
HLAA
Research Symposium: What Research Tells Us of Lifelong Learning
and its Impact on Earnings for People with Hearing Loss
March 2008 - NAD Expands College Bowl
Competition
December 2007 - Court affirms real-time captioning for
2nd deaf student
August 2007 - Handbook for Educating Hard of
Hearing Students Published
June 2006 - Scientific Society Cautions
on Use of Sound Amplification
December 2005 - Did you know that AG Bell provides FREE assistance to
school programs that have oral programs? Here's
Grace Tiessen's wonderful article on the PAP Program!
November 2005 - We often hear about the state Schools for the Deaf.
But how much do we hear about the oral schools? Here's
a great article that discusses how one of them is working to educate
kids with hearing loss.
September 2005 - People with hearing loss have a much easier time
attending college than they did years ago; note takers, CART, FM
systems, etc. provide today's student with advantages unimagined not too
long ago. So why would someone with hearing loss choose to reject all
these resources, a decision that surely made school much more difficult?
Here's one person's answer to that question.
June 2005 - Have you ever taken an online course and found lecture
videos to be inaccessible. If so you might want to tell your school
about Project ADEPT.
April 2005 - A report from British Columbia indicates
that an inexpensive sound amplification system improves classroom
performance for ALL kids - even those with perfect hearing!
November 2004 - Should local school districts
pay for cochlear implant maintenance costs?
September 2003 - Have you ever thought about the importance of
classroom acoustics to a person's ability to learn? It's especially
important to those with hearing loss. Here's a report
on Classroom Acoustics from the 2003 SHHH Convention.
June 2002 - Thought about taking classes, but concerned that it would
be tough to understand the instructor? Or maybe there isn't a college
that offers what you want within a reasonable distance. A new option
that might just help level the playing field is online classes. Here's
some information on NTID's online offerings.
June 2001 - Here's a double win! A non-profit organization called
Equal Access to Software and Information (EASI) provides workshops on
how to adapt computer and information technology for people with
disabilities. That's a win! Oh, yeah, and the courses are online!
Another win! Read all about it here.
June 2001 - Most of us are pretty familiar with the famous colleges
that cater to deaf folks. Gallaudet University and the National
Technical Institute for the Deaf (NTID) are the best known. In addition,
there are several regional schools that do a great job of serving the
hearing loss population. Here's a press release about some of the
programs at the Southwest Collegiate Institute for the
Deaf in Big Spring, TX.
March 2001 - We've been noticing a real proliferation of online
education opportunities lately. WGBH is the latest organization to
contribute to these expanding opportunities.
March 2001 - More on online education for people with hearing loss,
as DeSales University plans an online MBA for
people with hearing loss.
January 2001 - WGBH in Boston has been on the forefront of media
accessibility for many years. Here's an article on the
WGBH
Software Accessibility Guidelines.
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April 2013
Win or lose, the medical student who filed a
federal complaint against Creighton University for failure "to provide him
with auxiliary aids and services to ensure effective communication and an
equal opportunity to participate in and benefit from the School of
Medicine" is galvanizing advocates throughout the healthcare community and
raising awareness of the educational barriers that can exist for those who
are deaf and hard-of-hearing (DHoH). Michael Argenyi, who has bilateral
cochlear implants, uses lipreading and cued speech to communicate. He took
action against Creighton after his repeated requests for Communications
Access Real-Time Transcription (CART) and interpreter services were
denied, as detailed in court documents. After a year, the university
agreed to provide him oral interpreters and note-taking services for large
group lectures, as well as oral interpreters for certain laboratory
classes, but prohibited him from using interpreters in the clinic,
according to the court papers. Mr. Argenyi then took a leave of absence at
the beginning of his third year of medical school, which would have
consisted of clinical clerkships. In January, the United States Court of
Appeals for the Eighth Circuit reversed a summary judgment granted to
Creighton, giving new life to Mr. Argenyi's complaint. Now the case is
remanded back to the district court for a trial.
Full Story
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
October 2012
"I think my avoidance of social contexts with my
colleagues is interpreted as social withdrawal, reticence, or disinterest,
rather than what it mostly is: embarrassment that I cannot follow
conversations in a crowded environment. So, I 'beg off' or not show up."
That comment was made by one of 84 faculty members who said, in a study
conducted last year at the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities, that they
had experienced some degree of hearing loss. The hypothesis was that many
faculty members with hearing loss just bear up in silence, in a silent
world, and the study confirmed it. In fact, that number is probably quite
low. We have no way of knowing how many hearing-impaired faculty members
did not respond to the survey, but if their number reflects that of the
general population (as one would expect), it would be closer to 500. One
academician suggested that she did not feel free to discuss her hearing
loss until she became a department head and had tenure. Another said he
felt a total lack of sensitivity to the issue among the faculty and
administrators with whom he interacts.
Full
Story
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
March 2012
The parents of a hearing-impaired girl have sued
St. Scholastica High School after the girl was expelled for discipline
problems that included not listening to her teachers. Aamed Pryor and Niya
Jackson claim staff at the WestRogers Park Catholic school was well aware
their daughter, who enrolled at the school as a freshman in 2008, had a
hearing problem. The girl was expelled from the school, 7416 N. Ridge
Blvd., at the end of the fall semester this December after a string of
disciplinary "referrals" for offenses that included failure to listen,
disrespect and failure to respond to teacher requests.
Full Story
