Communication Accessibility: It’s Time to Change How We Communicate
All communications and interactions need to have multiple options. Not everyone wants to do the default, which is often a phone call or talking.
All communications and interactions need to have multiple options. Not everyone wants to do the default, which is often a phone call or talking.
One good thing came out of COVID-19. It forced me to try video calls again. The reason I don’t love video calls is that I miss too much. While I’m a strong lipreader, video calls have a few challenges. Why I Shied Away from Video Calls Often, the video jerks or jumps. It’s like ________ … Read more
Born profoundly deaf, I’ve depended on captioned videos since getting my first big clunky decoder in 1983. It was a box about the size of the older VHS and DVD players. Back then, captioned shows and movies were hard to find. Few things excited me more than seeing the caption symbol on the cover of … Read more
Image credit: Smithsonian Way back in 1983, I got my first caption decoder. It was a box about the size of two stacked DVD players. (As shown in header photo from Smithsonian.) Whenever I recorded TV shows, the captions burned into the video. That means I could take the tape and watch the show on … Read more
Hank Stroll, one of my first clients and a dear friend, would occasionally reply to my email with a chuckle telling me I’m doing what his wife does. He explained that his wife and I sometimes had a tendency to talk about something and he’d have no clue what we’re talking about. Like he entered … Read more
When I had thumb surgery in 2008, I invested in voice recognition software to try to get work done. I spent most of the time fighting and correcting the Dragon Naturally Speaking. The one good thing that came out of the maddening experience was this funny speech-to-text software post. Despite having little hope in software … Read more
I’ve been busy over at Bionic Ear Blog as two great blog posts inspired the two recent posts. I’m sharing them here as that blog and this one have different audiences. You may be interested in learning a little more about what it’s like for a deaf person to hear and the different types of … Read more
I’m a neat-aholic. When I enter a kid’s messy room, my mind overloads and my body stiffens. Though I’ve trained myself to accept a little messiness in my home, the exception to the rule is my office space. My youngest occasionally came into my office to color, play with toys or do projects. That was … Read more
In reading about a letter opener that looks like a whale, my first thought was who needs a letter opener when a finger works fine? OK, sometimes it fights to dig in the little space in the corner. Sometimes it walks away with a shiny new paper cut. (How does something tiny hurt a lot?) … Read more
Although I wrote Is a Blog Right for Your Business? in 2007, people still mention the article or contact me with questions after reading it. Blogging has changed a lot since then, but one paragraph remains true. Some people like to read blogs, others like to read newsletters, still others like to rely on feeds … Read more