D.J. DEMERS is a funny dude who wears hearing aids, but he doesn’t talk about them much.
He was recently nominated for a Canadian Comedy Award for best standup newcomer and was also a finalist in the prestigious Cream of Comedy competition. All this despite his hearing impairment. He also showcased for NBC at the Comedy Store in L.A. for their Stand-Up for Diversity initiative. What makes him diverse? Possibly his hearing aids.
D.J. has appeared in two episodes of the extremely intellectual show, ‘Cocktales’, on the Comedy Network. He has been profiled by the Toronto Star and ‘The Morning Show’ on Global. His videos have been featured in Eye Weekly and Bite.ca, and he has written for the Walrus Laughs and Virgin Mobile Canada. Most of the content had nothing to do with hearing aids.
These days, D.J. hosts and produces a monthly comedy show with Chuckle Co. at the Comedy Bar in Toronto. He is also the host of ‘Sharp Focus with D.J. Demers’ on The Accessible Channel. With his mixture of intelligence, playfulness, and not being able to hear-ness, D.J. is always a crowd favourite.
He also wears hearing aids.Interesting! Be sure to visit DJ Demers in Facebook and support your hard of hearing comedians! But, hey, I did some stand up comedy before. And it wasn't easy but I sure did have some fun doing it. And ya gotta have a passion for doing it if you want to make something out of it. Although I do have a creative side in me like doing my Uncle Bob's House - a Pepsi parody video (you gotta watch the original Pepsi commercial to understand my parody video).
Ahem, anyway, the video interview of Sarah Churman is already captioned so be sure to turn on the CC button on YouTube if you need captioning. Thank you Sharp Focus for including captioning! The 36 million people with hearing loss in the United States thank you! I maintain my own standard to include captioning to my own videos at every opportunity.
5 comments:
who care about her. she is not deaf at all.
Oh, she is deaf. When she turns off her implantable hearing aids she can't hear much of anything. Watch at 2:40 into the video where DJ asks Sarah on how well she hears without her hearing aids in.
"Without my hearing aids I basically ran on vibrations which you're obviously familiar with but you know, if someone hollored or if something crashed and hit the floor, that type of thing, you know, I would know that something had gone on, but I wasn't sure what it was."
Yep. Sounds quite deaf to me. But when turns on her implantable hearing aid she's hard of hearing.
Anony, stop being such a downer and pessimist. Whatever is bothering you you need to personally address it. You may not care for her, which is fine, but she is certainly deaf as well as hard of hearing.
Move on positively with your life.
Mike,
It's amazing when Anonymous just said by sensing his or her jealousy issue.
Believe me, it's almost a year since I received my CI and my lip reading is on the decline. They have no idea what they are missing.
Van Halen is coming to town!
R
She was not Deaf. She had severe hearing loss. it is amazing what they did but it should not be title DEAF girl hearing herself for the First Time. She has heard herself before, just not clearly. maybe there's a line drawn between using the term 'Deaf', because there are 'legally blind' people that can still see. maybe there is 'legally Deaf'.
Anony, I will not post your blog link.
Secondly, she is still deaf if she turns off her hearing aid. She is still deaf if she does not wear hearing aids. Put them on, she's hard of hearing. I didn't say "Deaf" but deaf. She had a hard time with her own hearing aids until she got the implantable ones which improved her ability to hear tremendously.
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