Volume 21 Issue 8

HOH-LD-News
Vol. 21, Issue 8
November 20, 2004

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Table of Contents
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- Article 1: Hearing Aid Rehabilitation: Value-Added Aspects of True Hearing Care - Part 1
- Article 2: Makeover show is a ratings boon
- Article 3: Victory for AG Bell Children's Legal Advocacy Program
- Article 4: Global Television commits to 100% closed captioning of its programming
- Classifieds
- Contact Information and Disclaimers

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Contact information and disclaimers are at the end of this newsletter.
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- Article 1: Hearing Aid Rehabilitation: Value-Added Aspects of True Hearing Care - Part 1
by Max Stanley Chartrand, Ph.D.
Health & Human Services/Research in Communicative Disorders
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Editor: How many of you are truly satisfied with the services provided by your audiologist? Are you treated as a person, or as a giant ear? Does your audiologist talk to you about hearing loss organizations, communications strategies, and assistive listening devices, or does she focus only on hearing aids.

We've long advocated for audiologists and other hearing professionals to provide complete hearing care to their patients, including the topics mentioned above. We were happy to see an article by Dr. Max Chartrand advocating the same approach, and we wanted to share the article with you.

From Healthy Hearing, August 23, 2004

Reprinted with permission from www.healthyhearing.com

This is Part one of two parts.

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Introduction

Among the best-kept secrets in healthcare today are the many necessary and attendant services available for hearing impaired patients through their audiologist and/or hearing aid dispenser. These services are essentially "value-added" in that they do not usually cost extra, and they are typically available to the consumer/patient, without additional charge, secondary to the acquisition of hearing aids.

Aural rehabilitation, when applied specifically to the use of hearing aids, as hearing aid rehabilitation, provides more value-added services for the consumer dollar than any other healthcare service today. Unfortunately, few consumers are aware these value-added services exist, or that they are indeed, an integral part of optimal hearing aid user success.

The provision (or lack) of these value-added services may reveal the quality and professionalism of the dispensing practice from which the hearing aids were (or are) obtained. Additionally, hearing aid rehabilitation programs increase the likelihood of the patient's success with appropriate amplification.

Value-added services can be expected through one's hearing healthcare professional, to varying degrees to each consumer and their specific situation. Hence, an effective auditory rehabilitation program that is sensitive to the needs of the consumer will be customized utilizing a combination of the four added-value tools presented below.

When hearing aids are offered with value-added services, quality of life improves, social relationships grow into meaningful bonds, and one's health, happiness and well-being increases.

A word to the wise: Never purchase a hearing aid without these priceless value-added professional services.

Categories of Value-Added Services

Based on my experience, I categorize four distinct value-added services for a truly successful hearing aid experience. The four categories are:

a.. Coping Strategies - These include hearing aid adaptation counseling and wearing schedules, communication repair strategies, third party counseling, and (when indicated) speech reading instruction.

b.. Assistive Devices - These include any technological application that can supplement or enhance the function of a hearing aid, including FM and Infrared systems, classroom sound-field, real-time and closed captioning, TDD/TTY, TDD Relay, amplified telephones, vibrating or flashing alarms of all kinds, and the utilization of computer and Internet skills.

c.. Self-Help Resources - Every hearing aid consumer with a serious hearing impairment should be connected to self-help organizations, including Self-Help for Hard of Hearing People (SHHH), the American Tinnitus Association (ATA), Deafness Research Foundation (DRF), their state Commission for the Deaf and Hearing Impaired, and a host of other local, state and national resources. Also of value are the names and contact information of local otolaryngologists and cochlear implant centers.

d.. ADA/IDEA Counseling - These and other important federal and state "empowerment" laws constitute the safety net for the hearing impaired population. No hearing aid rehabilitation program is complete without providing detailed information and counseling for consumers that may benefit from these laws.

Admittedly, not every consumer is going to need or explore every category. The type and degree of hearing impairment, age of onset of hearing loss, the listening circumstance, individual needs and desires and other variables determine which value-added services are necessary to achieve communicative wholeness, or maximal communication.

Hearing Aids, Cochlear Implants & Children: A few notes...

It is very important for the teacher and the teaching assistant to know how to change hearing aid batteries and how to assure that the hearing aid is working properly. Of course the teacher cannot be an expert in hearing aid care or maintenance, but a few moments spent addressing very basic issues (is the hearing aid in the ear correctly? Is it in the correct ear? Is it working?) are moments very well spent! Imagine the outcome for the child sitting in the classroom all day with a dead battery in his/her hearing aid?

School children with mild or moderate hearing impairment often present with speech and language deficits, possible psychological issues and a variety of learning disabilities. It is truly amazing how often we find children receiving all kinds of remedial services without benefit of a comprehensive diagnostic audiometric evaluation, or appropriate amplification! Most children with mild and moderate hearing loss will require hearing aids for maximal educational exposure and opportunity. Each child with hearing loss should ideally work with an educational or pediatric audiologist to determine the best technology and hearing management strategies available (and required) for the individual child.

Children with severe and profound hearing losses will typically require hearing aids, FM systems, classroom sound-field and other assistive technologies: Closed caption TV & video, large area listening systems, and perhaps even interpreters of various kinds in some critical listening situations. Training in coping strategies helps the child and others around them make needed accommodations and considerations to assure unimpeded communicative interaction. Again, individual professional consultation is extremely important.

Just as important as "hearing," is what the child does with what they hear! Audiologists are often called upon to test children for Auditory Processing Disorders (APD). APD problems can (and often do) occur in children with normal hearing! Children diagnosed with APD require a systematic program of central auditory development training, to better attend to the primary signal (their teacher, a parent, etc) and to better squelch noise and other distractions within their educational and listening environments.

Children with cochlear implants will need assistive devices, coping strategy training, and other support services. School age children are covered under the umbrella of the federal Individuals with Disabilities Education Act of 1978 (IDEA)-and subsequent updates-as well as the more general Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 (ADA). These federal laws afford children a plethora of benefits and advantages to give them every advantage to prepare appropriately to later perform and compete in a hearing world.

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- Article 2: Makeover show is a ratings boon
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Editor: I'm not much of a fan of "reality TV", mostly because I prefer actual reality to the manufactured stuff. So I didn't see the Extreme Makeover of the Vardon home. I was apparently one of the few who didn't see it, as that episode had the largest audience EVER for that show!

We keep talking about the increasing incidence of hearing loss in our population, especially as years of ear abuse catch up to both boomers and gen-Xers. But we really haven't seen much evidence of it. Perhaps the ratings of this show are an early indication that people are starting to be interested in what they can do to alleviate some of the effects of their hearing loss!

This article is reprinted with permission from the Daily Tribune in Royal Oak, Michigan.

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From the newsroom of The Daily Tribune, Royal Oak, Michigan, Thursday, November 11, 2004 .....

By Christy Strawser, Daily Tribune Staff Writer

OAK PARK - The already happy Vardon family was ecstatic Tuesday to find out their episode of "Extreme Makeover: Home Edition" was a ratings blockbuster.

ABC-TV contacted Judy Vardon to tell her the two-hour Sunday episode featuring her family's story drew a whopping 20.5 million viewers.

That makes it the show's highest-ever rated episode.

"Wow!" responded Judy.

Their episode dominated its time slot and made history for ABC. It delivered the network's largest audience and highest adult ratings for series programming in the time period in more than 4-1/2 years, according to ABC staffers in Hollywood.

The reality makeover show was a tear-jerker that showed celebrity designers and a volunteer workforce pooling their efforts to change life for the Vardons.

The family is unique because parents Judy and Larry are deaf, and their youngest son Lance, 12, is blind and autistic. He can't see them and they can't hear him, so they "talk" into each other's hands with sign language.

Lance loves to explore the outdoors and would sometimes slip out when he could and wander away; he also required constant supervision.

So older son Stefan, 15, wrote a letter asking the television show to make life safer for his parents and brother.

The result is a technological wonder that lets the family relax. Cameras and flat-screen monitors throughout the house let them watch Lance from anywhere, a security system flashes strobe lights if he tries to go outside, and a computer translates key strokes into Braille.

Fairway Builders was featured prominently in the episode, because the Southfield company donated all of the necessary construction costs and was the first in the show's history to finish the renovation project well before deadline.

Fairway had 150 workers at the Vardons' LaBelle Street house around the clock until it had four months work done in a week's time.

"That family is as good or better than portrayed on TV," said Adam Helfman, president of Fairway. "I can't say enough good things about them. I feel very fortunate. Not everyone gets a chance to give back. I feel gifted to do this. The feeling that I get is priceless."

All the work was volunteer and Helfman said the company hasn't tallied a price estimate for the work it put into the house. But it was at least several hundred thousand dollars.

That has some wondering if the family will suddenly have to pay the piper for their new digs.

The city of Oak Park charges 46 mills for every $1,000 of a home's taxable value. Taxable value is about 50 percent of the market value of the house.

There has been no reassessment of the Vardons' new house, so all numbers are still guesswork, but if a house in Oak Park goes from $100,000 to $200,000 in overall worth, the owners would pay an extra $2,300 a year in taxes.

"Their taxes are based on their assessment. It will be required to be reassessed," said Oak Park Assessor Aaron Powers. "I can't tell you what type of increase, but with that significant amount of renovation, there will be an increase."

Powers added that the average Oak Park house sold for $135,900 in 2004.

"Certainly, their taxes will be affected, but I don't anticipate any super incredible jump," Powers said.

The Vardons revel in their new house that has a new facade, stone vestibule, wide front porch, stone walkways and backyard patio, heated lap pool, new work shed and a sensory garden path.

The makeover team tore down a bedroom to add a laundry room off the parents' bedroom, punched out the ceilings to the rafters and tore down the walls between the living room and kitchen to make the first floor an open, loftlike space.

They gave Judy the kitchen of her dreams with oversized granite counters, a seating island and a six-burner stainless steel stove.

They built an autism room in the basement with lots of textured toys for Lance, gave Stefan a unique basement bedroom with vehicle headlights as his lighting and a mountainscape that lights up behind his bed.

Judy got a finished craft room in the basement with built in desks and cabinetry, next to an indoor sauna, and young Lance got a fancy swing set in the side yard.

In addition to the house work, Stefan got a $50,000 college scholarship from Starkey Hearing Foundation.

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---------- Hearing Loss Web "New to Hearing Loss" Info ---------
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We are happy to announce a new website section specifically for
people who are new to hearing loss. We have provided answers to
the questions we are most frequently asked by people with newly
identified hearing loss - and also to some questions people
don't ask, but should! ;-) Check it out at
http://www.hearinglossweb.com/Misc/new.htm. Please send
questions, comments, or suggestions to larry@hearinglossweb.com.
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- Article 3: Victory for AG Bell Children's Legal Advocacy Program
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Editor: As scientists learn more about language acquisition, it becomes increasingly clear that early, rich exposure is the key to developing language. With this in mind, it's pretty clear that pre-schoolers who use cochlear implants have some pretty specific requirements for their educational environment. One of AG Bell's activities is to advocate for appropriate environments, as the following press release describes.

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Ruling Orders Reimbursement for Educational-Related Expenses

Washington, DC, November 10, 2004 - The Alexander Graham Bell Association for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing (AG Bell) Children's Legal Advocacy Program scored another victory on behalf of children who are deaf or hard of hearing seeking spoken language education in the public schools. In E.N. vs. St. Johns County School Board (FL), the State of Florida Division of Administrative Hearings ordered reimbursement of educational-related expenses for the family of a three-year old girl born profoundly deaf.

In the October 27 decision, the judge ruled that a varying exceptionalities classroom, which contains children with a variety of special needs, offered by the St. Johns County School Board did not meet the requirements for a child with hearing loss using spoken language communication. The girl uses a cochlear implant to process sound and learned to listen and talk at the Clarke-Jacksonville Auditory Oral Center for Deaf Children.

In the decision, the judge ruled that, under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) requirement for free and appropriate education (FAPE), the evidence indicated that none of the County's programs offered an educational setting designed specifically for pre-schoolers with cochlear implants using spoken communication. The evidence also showed that the programs lacked professionals with the necessary knowledge, training and experience, as well as parent training and on-going mapping services for the cochlear implant. Furthermore, the judge found that the proposed placement would likely cause the child's language skills to regress, acknowledging the "narrow window of opportunity" to acquire language during the pre-school years.

"AG Bell's goal is to ensure that all children who are deaf or hard of hearing and use spoken language as their primary mode of communication have access to appropriate educational placements and related services," said K. Todd Houston, Ph.D., Executive Director/CEO, AG Bell. "This ruling sends a clear message about the specific elements that should be in place to support any child with hearing loss who is learning to listen and talk."

Launched in 2001, AG Bell's Children's Legal Advocacy Program has successfully advocated for appropriate spoken language services in several cases, including The Matter of D.D. vs. Foothill Selpa (CA) and Megan C. vs. ECI LifePath Systems (Texas). The program also provides information and resource referrals to families of children with hearing loss through parent advocacy services.

######

The Alexander Graham Bell Association for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing (AG Bell) is a lifelong resource, support network, and advocate for listening, learning, talking, and living independently with hearing loss. Through publications, outreach, training, scholarships, and financial aid, AG Bell promotes the use of spoken language and hearing technology. Headquartered in Washington, DC with chapters located in the United States and Canada and a network of international affiliates, AG Bell's global presence provides its members and the public with the support they need-close to home. With over a century of service, AG Bell supports its mission: Advocating Independence through Listening and Talking! For more information, contact AG Bell at (202) 337- 5220 or visit the AG Bell website at www.agbell.org.

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- Article 4: Global Television commits to 100% closed captioning of its programming
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Editor: Television captioning is becoming pretty commonplace in most developed countries, but few networks have captioning 24/7. Canada's Global Television Network Inc. has announced that they will provide this service starting January 1.

Kudos!

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OTTAWA - The Global Television Network Inc. announced today a new policy that will increase closed captioning levels for the deaf, deafened and hard-of-hearing communities of Canada to all its programming, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. The policy will also apply to all Global-owned television stations.

The new policy, which exceeds the captioning levels required by the CRTC, will take effect on January 1, 2005. It is the result of collaborative work between Global Television, Mr. Henry Vlug, a lawyer and an advocate for deaf people who is himself deaf, and the Canadian Human Rights Commission (CHRC).

This settlement was reached through the use of mediation, a voluntary approach that allows parties to get a better understanding of each other's positions and to address the needs and interests that are key to finding a solution. Mediation is being increasingly used by the CHRC to help parties craft creative solutions and reach a speedy resolution to their dispute.

"Global is very proud of its new policy," said Doug Bonar, Senior Vice President, Technology and Broadcast Operations. "It will ensure that members of the deaf, deafened and hard-of-hearing communities have access to and can enjoy the programming of Global Television as fully as any other member of our society," he added.

"Canadians who are deaf, deafened, or hard of hearing have as much right to access television programming as their fellow Canadians," said Henry Vlug. "Today's settlement is another important milestone for all of us," he added.

Mr. Vlug was also pleased that Global Television will take additional steps to inform its advertising clients of the importance of captioning their commercials to reach this valued segment of the viewing audience.

Mary Gusella, Chief Commissioner for the Canadian Human Rights Commission, indicated that the commission is very pleased with this positive outcome and congratulated the parties who dedicated their time and efforts to make things happen.

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- Classifieds
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One Education Opportunity and two Employment Opportunities appear in this issue. (Ads appear after this brief table of contents.)

Education Opportunity 1
Graduate Studies in Psychology
Gallaudet University
Washington, DC

Employment Opportunity 1
Customer Service Representative
Wisconsin Telecommunications Relay System
Madison, WI

Employment Opportunity 2
Staff Attorney
Law Center for Families (LCFF)
Oakland, CA

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Education Opportunity 1
Graduate Studies in Psychology
Gallaudet University
Washington, DC
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Interested in pursuing graduate studies in psychology?

The Department of Psychology at Gallaudet University offers both an APA accredited Ph.D. program in Clinical Psychology, and a NASP/NCATE accredited Specialist degree program in School Psychology, both of which include specialized training for work with Deaf and Hard of Hearing clients and their families.

The Ph.D. program requires four years of coursework plus a one year full-time internship.

The School Psychology program requires two years of course work and a full-time, academic year internship.

Limited financial support is available.

Applicants should possess a bachelor's degree in psychology, or be in the process of completing their bachelor's degree, and have either a psychology major or substantial course work in psychology. Relevant work experience is desired, though not required.

Deaf and hearing applications are encouraged. For more information, contact Patrick J. Brice, Ph.D., Clinical Program Director (patrick.brice@gallaudet.edu), or Lynne Blennerhassett, Ed.D., School Psychology Program Director (lynne.blennerhassett@gallaudet.edu).

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Employment Opportunity 1
Customer Service Representative
Wisconsin Telecommunications Relay System
Madison, WI
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Society's Assets, Inc is seeking a qualified individual to work as a full-time Customer Service Representative at the Wisconsin Telecommunications Relay System in Madison, Wisconsin.

General Information
The Customer Service Representative performs a variety of job functions in order to provide an optimum level of relay customer service. The primary job responsibilities of the Customer Service Representative are to serve as the principal point of contact for WTRS consumers and give educational presentations about the relay system. This position requires travel and schedule flexibility.

Requirements
- Bachelor's Degree
- Three or more years of exposure to Deaf Culture and the diverse communication needs of people who are Deaf, Hard of Hearing and/or Speech Disabled.
- Ability to communicate effectively on the phone and in person
- Experience in public speaking
- Excellent presentation skills
- Excellent customer service skills

Additional Skills Preferred
- Fluency in American Sign Language (ASL)
- Preference for studies in Communications or Social Services
- Basic data entry skills and knowledge of a variety of computer programs (Microsoft Office Suite preferred)
- Knowledge of telecommunications equipment
- Experience teaching ASL classes

Salary
Salary is commensurate with experience. Excellent benefits package!

Submit cover letter and resume to:
Wisconsin Telecommunications Relay System
Attn: Human Resources Manager
8383 Greenway Blvd, Suite 90
Middleton, WI 53562
Phone (Voice/TTY): (800) 600-7826
Fax: (608) 827-0402
Email: kathy.ottelien@hamiltonrelay.com

Equal Opportunity/Affirmative Action Employer

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Employment Opportunity 2
Staff Attorney
Law Center for Families (LCFF)
Oakland, CA
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Law Center for Families (LCFF) in Oakland, California, seeks a dynamic leader to serve as Staff Attorney for our Deaf Women's Legal Project that focuses on meeting the special needs of deaf victims of domestic violence and sexual assault and assists deaf victims to end abuse and secure financial and emotional stability.

The project has two additional partners, Abused Deaf Women's Advocacy Services and the California Center for Law and the Deaf. The project partners are committed to providing culturally sensitive and linguistically appropriate legal services to deaf survivors. This position provides a unique opportunity for experienced or motivated attorney advocates passionate about domestic violence and or the rights of the deaf.

For a detailed job description and qualifications and how to apply, please go to http://www.lcff.org and click on "employment."

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- Contact Information and Disclaimers
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