Volume 29 Issue 2

HOH-LD-News
Vol. 29, Issue 2
October 14, 2006

Copyright (C) 2006 Hearing Loss Web. All rights reserved.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Table of Contents
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

- Article 1: Gallaudet University in Turmoil

- Article 2: Discrimination Testing: Understanding the Importance of This Hearing Test - Part 2

- Article 3: Cultivating a Musical Bionic Ear: Teaching Wendy Cheng - Part 1

- Article 4: Short Takes

Our advertisers make it possible for us to provide HOH-LD-News as a free service. Please let them know you appreciate their support, and please mention that you saw their message in HOH-LD-News.

- Advertisers in this Issue
First Premium Placement:
Sound Clarity, Inc.
Second Premium Placement:
10% off Equipment Sale at Harris Communications!
Fourth Premium Placement:
Switch to Sprint
Classified Section:
Two Online Stores and One Employment Opportunity

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Contact information and disclaimers are at the end of this newsletter.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

----------------------------------------------------------------
Sound Clarity, Inc.
----------------------------------------------------------------

Use coupon code HLDWEB2006 when you shop on our website and receive an additional 10% discount on your purchase.

Choose from Amplified Telephones, TTYs, TV listening, Personal amplifiers, Vibrating Alarm Clocks, Hearing Aid Batteries and More...

You'll find everything at www.soundclarity.com

Hurry! This offer ends 10/28/06. Offer does not apply to international orders or to dealer accounts or to prior orders.

For more information go to http://www.soundclarity.com/hohnews
or contact us at mailto:info@soundclarity.com

----------------------------------------------------------------

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
- Article 1: Gallaudet University in Turmoil
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Here's a quick summary of the events at Gallaudet since the initial protests began last May. For more detailed coverage, including some insights into the passion that fuels the protests, please point your browser to http://www.hearinglossweb.com/Issues/Identity/gal06/gal06.htm

This story first came to light last May after Jane Fernandes was selected as Gallaudet University's next President. There were peaceful protests for a couple of weeks, and then the school year ended, students dispersed for the summer, and the whole thing seemed to be forgotten.

I was half expecting a resumption of the protests when students returned last September, and I was pleasantly surprised when that didn't happen. I assumed that the Gallaudet community had finally accepted Jane Fernandes as the next president.

What reignited the protests was the meeting of the Gallaudet Board of Trustees last week. The protests began peacefully enough, but soon escalated as students took over one of the main buildings on campus, an event that disrupted classes in the middle of midterm exams.

A couple of days later, the students shut down the campus, blocking all entrances. This action had the effect of shutting down not only Gallaudet University, but also the elementary school (Kendall Demonstration Elementary School) and high school (Model Secondary School for the Deaf), both of which are located on the University campus.

Negotiations continued, but soon reached an impasse. Students are demanding that Fernandes step down and that the search process begin anew; administrators maintain that those are the two things that are not negotiable. Prospects to at least reopen the school brightened on Thursday, when the administration and student leaders signed an agreement that would allow that to happen. But a student leader withdrew his support, and the agreement disintegrated.

Washington DC police have taken up positions outside the campus. They are viewing the protest as a University matter and say they will intervene only in the event of property damage or threats to people's safety.

About 7PM Friday evening President I. King Jordan gave the students one final warning that they must end the campus blockade. When they failed to do so, campus police began arresting the demonstrators.

For more information, please point your browser to: http://www.hearinglossweb.com/Issues/Identity/gal06/gal06.htm

----------------------------------------------------------------
10% off Equipment Sale at Harris Communications!
----------------------------------------------------------------

Get 10% off all equipment when you shop online at Harris Communications. From vibrating clocks to signalers, D-Link videophones and more, Harris Communications is the one-stop shop for products for Deaf individuals. No promotion codes are required for the discount. 10% discount applied at checkout.

(Product restrictions apply. Offer expires October 22, 2006.)

For more information, go to
http://www.harriscomm.com/link/?www.harriscomm.com?sr=hlw
or contact us at mailto:info@harriscomm.com

----------------------------------------------------------------

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
- Article 2: Discrimination Testing: Understanding the Importance of This Hearing Test - Part 2
by Henry Smith
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Editor: Here's a good discussion of presbycusis (age related hearing loss), how it causes loss of speech discrimination, and what you should do if you experience it. This is part two of two parts.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Your Discrimination Score and Your Hearing Aid

When you know your discrimination score, you will know what you can realistically expect from your hearing aids. With a quality hearing aid in place and calibrated correctly, you will be given back many of the sounds that you might have missed in real world circumstances, like a cricket's chirp or the falling of rain on your window. And, most importantly, you will be given the ability to hear consonants better, so that you will be able to follow conversations more easily than you could without the aid - particularly in noisy or distracting situations.

In addition, new hearing aids are being introduced that have adaptive directional microphones that adjust via algorithms that depend on the level of sound in the room. These microphones can improve the signal to noise ratio and can help to focus someone's voice in a noisy situation, allowing one with hearing problems to hear sounds at the level of his or her discrimination score. If possible, find a vendor who sells these new hearing aids so that you have the best chance at optimizing your hearing.

Conclusion

Having a hearing test administered is one of the most important steps that you can take before you buy a hearing aid to correct your hearing problems. When you go to purchase your hearing aid, you should bring your discrimination scores with you, whether the test has been performed by your physician or by the vendor. If the hearing aid vendor does not offer discrimination testing or does not ask to see your scores, you should reconsider your vendor choice.

Most importantly, you must remember that a hearing aid will never be able to bring your hearing back to what it was before your hearing loss occurred. But when you know your discrimination score and you understand the nature of your hearing problems, you can have a realistic expectation of what the aid can do for you. And, armed with this knowledge, you can find the right hearing aid that can give you enjoyment in your life again.

About the Author

Henry Smith is the founder of America Hears (http://www.americahears.com/), a leading manufacturer and distributor of hearing aids online for over 26 years. The company recently rolled out its new FreedomAD product line, which utilizes the latest generation of ADRO hearing aid technology. Henry started the company in 1979, following a 15-year career at the Pennsylvania School of the Deaf, including his work as an Acoustic Technician. Henry is a pioneer in the use of computers and the Internet to allow customers to have a hands-on approach to the tuning and adjusting of their digital hearing aids (http://www.americahears.com/technology.shtml). He strives to be customer-centric in all aspects of his work.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
- Article 3: Cultivating a Musical Bionic Ear: Teaching Wendy Cheng - Part 1
by Dorée Huneven
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Editor: We've met Wendy Cheng on these pages a few times, most recently when she described her experiences playing her viola at the Hearing Loss Association of America national convention. She shared a bit about what it's like for a person who can't hear pitch to play a musical instrument. It almost makes you wonder what it would be like to teach a person who can't hear pitch to play a musical instrument!

Well wonder no longer! Here's Dorée Huneven, Wendy's viola teacher, with a few thoughts on teaching Wendy. This is part one of two parts.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Wendy Cheng is an adult viola student who has been studying with me for a year and a half. During that time, she has taken the ASTA CP Viola Level 4 Exam twice, greatly advancing the second year. The first time, she performed Gabriel-Marie's La Cinquantaine, and the second time she performed the first and second movements of the Concerto in G by Telemann, as well as all of the required scales, etudes and sight reading. She received a "V" (for "very good") in most categories including "overall impression" in both exams. Neither of her examiners, Jim Batts nor Linda Smith, realized that Wendy is 100% deaf.
From the age of two, she suffered profound hearing loss in the right ear, and moderate loss in the left ear as the result of having been administered an ototoxic drug to treat a high fever. This hadn't stopped her from taking up the violin in college, or from studying privately and playing in orchestras and chamber groups as an adult. In 1996, she wrote an article for Stringendo detailing her musical life as a hearing-impaired person. But one morning, shortly after submitting the article, she awoke and realized that the remaining hearing was muffled even when she had her hearing aid on. It soon became horrifyingly obvious that overnight the rest of her hearing had gone. As in her previous loss, she was suffering from a viral infection, and it caused all remaining hearing to be wiped out.

Total deafness came just before Wendy was about to go to a string quartet workshop. She decided to stop lessons for awhile to research options of what she could possibly do. She decided to get a cochlear implant, and by December 1996 the surgery was completed. Simply stated, this consists of two parts: an internal implant surgically placed near the skull bone behind the ear, and a speech processor. The internal implant has a tiny electrode array that is threaded into the snail-shaped cochlea of the ear, and artificially tries to substitute for the thousands of tiny hairs in the cochlea. It picks up the sound waves, magnifies them, and conducts them down to the sound processor, that is about the size of a text pager .The sound processor can be programmed to meet the patient's specific needs. If the "sh" sound is too shrill, for example, it can be toned down; speech can be made very clear and intelligible when the audiologist tweaks the processor's program. The operation to insert the device in the ear is considered outpatient surgery. It is done under general anesthesia, and the cost is high: fifty to sixty thousand dollars. It takes three weeks for the incision to heal; then the patient goes to the hospital to get the sound processor. This is sometimes called the activation, or turn-on process. Although cochlear implant developers have become skilled at designing the internal electronic component to handle speech sounds, they are only beginning to look at designing them for serious music perception. In fact, in Wendy's words, recorded music sounded "like a garbage truck going by the house" for the first few weeks after the processor was activated.

Wendy arrives early for her lessons at The Academy of Music, Phil Hosford's school in Gaithersburg. She waits outside the studio until I put my head out to call, "Wendy, your turn." No response. I go out and stand directly in front of her: "Your turn, Wendy!" She smiles, greets me, comes in, unpacks her viola, and we chat a bit. I ask, "How was your week? How are the girls?" She has two daughters who both take music lessons. It's normal teacher-student friendly talk before the lesson gets under way. She can hear me fairly well if I look directly at her and speak clearly.

At her lesson, Wendy hands me her viola, which I take to tune. It's already in tune. She has obviously been practicing at home before her lesson. We do an open-string bowing warm-up, and then proceed to her three-octave scales. Our difficulties begin immediately, and they center on intonation. Wendy tuned her viola at home using an electronic tuning device which registers a green light when the string is in tune, but at the lesson, she is aurally drowning. Wendy has no pitch perception. I am pedagogically drowning. We must do whatever we can to get notes in tune and the shifts accurate and smooth.

I resort to primitive chicanery and put a tape on her viola. Why not? Doesn't a rock climber need footholds? We decide to place a tape for 3rd finger in third position (F-natural on the A-string) because Wendy assures me that it is the most helpful for her. This is mysterious to me. And why only one tape? We go through the scale, and I put little up-or-down arrows in the music over the out-of-tune notes. Wendy groans expressively, grabs a pencil and highlights them in bright orange. I talk her through the pitch, note by note, and the scale is played three, four, five times. The real work Wendy does at home: note by note, she plays with the tuner on, and uses muscle memory to learn her distances. Sympathetic vibrations are also somewhat helpful. The reason Wendy changed from violin to viola was because she could not discriminate violin pitches located in 5th position or higher. She went to Potter's Violin Shop and basically demanded the most resonant viola they had in her price range. She plays in a room without a carpet to detect ringing better. It's a grueling struggle to get intonation sorted out, and going through the tuner/sympathetic vibrations process at home takes many practice hours. She doesn't remind me, but I know that she has a full-time job, plus two daughters, a husband, and a house to care for.

----------------------------------------------------------------
Switch to Sprint
----------------------------------------------------------------

Try the latest version of the FREE Sprint IP Wireless application for BlackBerry users!

* Click on your Blackberry Internet browser
* Go to www.sprintrelay.com/download/ to begin the FREE download.
* Check out the new updates on Sprint IP Wireless!

Don't have a BlackBerry device, add SprintIP to your AIM Buddy list to make a relay call.

----------------------------------------------------------------

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
- Article 4: Short Takes
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Editor: Here are our picks of some additional stories that you may find interesting. For more, please point your browser to: http://www.hearinglossweb.com/news/curr.htm

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Court: UPS Discriminated Against Deaf

A federal appeals court on Tuesday upheld a lower court ruling that UPS Inc. violated anti-discrimination laws by automatically barring the deaf and hearing-impaired from driving parcel delivery trucks. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals agreed with U.S. District Judge Thelton Henderson's 2004 ruling that the Atlanta-based company's practices breach the Americans with Disabilities Act. Henderson, in a class-action case representing as many as 1,000 would-be drivers, ruled that the hearing impaired should "be given the same opportunities that a hearing applicant would be given to show that they can perform the job of package-car driver safely and effectively."

http://tinyurl.com/y7k25t or
http://news.moneycentral.msn.com/provider/providerarticle.asp
?feed=AP&Date=20061010&ID=6092340

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Burbank Airport To Add Facilities For The Deaf

As part of a disability settlement, Bob Hope Airport in Burbank will add monitors and a kiosk to make security, baggage and other information available for the deaf and hard of hearing. The airport settlement with the Greater Los Angeles Agency on Deafness calls for the terminals to add monitors displaying messages, according to officials. The airport will also install a video information kiosk to help hearing-impaired passengers navigate the facility, arrange for sign-language interpreters and increase the number of teletype pay phones to at least nine.

http://cbs2.com/topstories/local_story_279163911.html

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Counseling Adults Prior to a Cochlear Implant

Approximately 738,000 persons have severe to profound hearing impairments in the United States and increasing numbers are seeking cochlear implantation, including adults with long-term and prelinguistic hearing loss. However, variable outcomes in relation to cochlear implant performance have been reported in these populations (Schramm, Fitzpatrick, & Seguin, 2002; Waltzman, Roland, & Cohen, 2002). Clinically, these variable outcomes can be disappointing for clients. Therefore, adults with prelinguistic hearing loss could be considered borderline for cochlear implantation and may be more likely to benefit from more comprehensive pre-implant counseling.

http://tinyurl.com/ugb7w or
http://www.asha.org/about/publications/leader-online
/archives/2006/060926e.htm

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
- Classifieds
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Two online stores and one employment opportunity appear in this issue. (Ads appear after this brief table of contents.)

WCI. Providing Solutions for People with Hearing Loss.
15% Savings on "Treats" in October!
http://www.weitbrecht.com

Potomac Technology. Everything You Need Under One Roof.
FREE SHIPPING! A SONIC ALERT SWEEPSTAKES!
http://www.potomactech.com

Employment Opportunity
Various Positions
GLAD
Los Angeles

-------------------
WCI. Providing Solutions for People with Hearing Loss.
15% Savings on "Treats" in October!
http://www.weitbrecht.com
-------------------

15% Savings on "Treats" in October!

WCI makes it easy to be ready for the ghosts, goblins and all the other Trick-or-Treaters at your door this Halloween! Take 15% off any of our doorbell signalers during the month of October. Choose from several signalers that will let you know when someone is at your door from the Boogeyman to Superman! Call us now at 1-800-233-9130 (V/TTY) or visit us online at http://www.weitbrecht.com (use code WCIH1006 when ordering).

To receive a copy of our WCI catalog, email sales@weitbrecht.com to request it.

WCI. Providing Solutions for People with Hearing Loss.

-------------------
Potomac Technology. Everything You Need Under One Roof.
FREE SHIPPING! A SONIC ALERT SWEEPSTAKES!
http://www.potomactech.com
-------------------

FREE SHIPPING!

A SONIC ALERT SWEEPSTAKES!

Skip the candy at Halloween this year and get your "treats" from Potomac Technology! During October you'll get FREE SHIPPING with any purchase of $100.00 or more AND your name will automatically be entered for a chance to win a Sonic Shaker SPB100 from Sonic Alert (retail value $29.95).

Call us toll free at 1-800-433-2838 (V/TTY) or visit us online at http://www.potomactech.com for details. (use code PTECH1006 for free shipping).

And to request our catalog just email us at info@potomactech.com

Potomac Technology. Everything You Need Under One Roof!

-------------------
Employment Opportunity 1
Various Positions
GLAD
Los Angeles
-------------------

GLAD is an Affirmative Action Employer with equal opportunity for men, women and people with disabilities. For more information on the following positions, please go to: www.gladinc.org. The status of all positions is: Regular, Full-time, Non-Exempt, Full Fringe Benefits unless otherwise noted. All positions are open until filled.

* Case Manager - Los Angeles, CA
* Director of Human Services - Los Angeles, CA
* Community Interpreter - Riverside, CA
* Job Developer/Interpreter - Crenshaw, Norwalk and West Covina, CA
* Community Health Educator-Los Angeles, CA
* LIFESIGNS Dispatcher - Riverside, CA
* Field Coordinator - Los Angeles, CA
* Community Relations - Los Angeles, CA
* Accounts Receivable Specialist - Los Angeles, CA

If interested for any of these positions then please submit resume and application to:

Jeff Fetterman
Human Resources Specialist
Greater Los Angeles Agency on Deafness, Inc.
2222 Laverna Avenue
Los Angeles, CA 90041
V/TDD: (323) 550-4207
Fax #: (323)550-4204
E-mail: jfetterman@gladinc.org

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
- Contact Information and Disclaimers
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

We are very interested in your comments concerning the content and format of this newsletter. We want this publication to be useful to you. Please send your comments and suggestions to: hearinglossweb@hearinglossweb.com

Visit our Website at: http://www.hearinglossweb.com

To subscribe to this newsletter, email
HOH-LD-News-subscribe@yahoogroups.com. Yahoogroups will respond with a subscription email.

To unsubscribe to this newsletter, email
HOH-LD-News-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com. Yahoogroups will respond with an unsubscription email.

Archives for this newsletter are on our website at:
http://www.hearinglossweb.com.
Click on "Free Email Newsletter" in the header.

Advertising information for HOH-LD-News and Hearing Loss Web is available at http://www.hearinglossweb.com/Misc/adv/adv.htm.

Publication of articles or advertisements does not constitute an endorsement of the products or services offered, nor of the companies that offer them.