How About The Hearing Impaired?

The election in November will decide who our next President will be in 2001. The health care all of us have needs improvement. What changes can we expect in the next four years?

On July 25, President Clinton issued an Executive Memorandum on Assistive Technology and Universal Design. The Memorandum requires that Interagency Committee on Disability and Rehabilitation (ICDR) which is chaired by the National Institute on Disability and Rehabilitation (NIDRR) to prepare a report identifying priority needs for the advancement of assistive technologies and universal design capabilities.

Conwal Incorporated, a federal government contractor is supporting the effort to collect information from the disability committee to report to the President through this website http://www.conwal.com/icdr/execmemo/

You can answer a brief questionnaire and be heard. They conduct focus groups with individuals with disabilities to collect additional input. The answers you give are useful to the creation of recommendations to the President. Information will also be collected from technology researchers and federal agencies.

In order to make the necessary changes with the disabled, you must let your voice be heard. With all the advances in the way we are living, it's a shame that the disabled such as the hearing impaired must struggle along. If we want to make something happen, why is it always the disabled who must put out the extra effort?

As I filled out this survey I remember all the inconveniences I'm dealing with on a daily basis, as a hearing impaired person. For example: on a bus, I may have problems understanding the driver calling out the stops. The television has captions, yet more times then I'd like to think about the letters are scrambled, and by the time the problem is remedied by the typist, it's too late to comprehend what the reporter was discussing in the first place, as in the news.

Hearing Impairment goes undetected because of silence, so we need to speak out, load and clear, for our future. Our rights shouldn't be taken away, we should have the quaility in our lives so we can reach our true potential.

Thomas Jefferson talked about rights in the Declaration Of Independence. The Hearing Impaired are a part of We The People. Submit your input by October 23rd, 2000 to the previously mentioned website - it will be our way to voice our opinion. We must let the people who can change things know what our concerns are right now, today!

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