The value of work encounters for deaf and hard of hearing people

In a work setting where you work, how much do you value interaction among your peers or co-workers? Managers? Your supervisor? Boss? Clients? Customers? Ask yourself, how many interactions or encounters do you get in a day with hearing people? Conversational interactions include impromptu conversations, meeting conversations, hall conversations or office conversations. All of these things occur on average 80 times a day. But for many deaf or even hard of hearing people the conversational occurences with hearing people can sometimes drop down to almost zero, which is like having an office with a brick wall around a desk. Yet, barriers are meant to come down.

Not everybody is conversant in sign language, which includes deaf and hard of hearing people. Just because one has a hearing loss does not mean the person is knowledgeable in sign language. But fortunately, we have technology that can easily help bridge this communication gap very well. Not a 100% solution but with technology it can certainly bring up the number of conversational occurences in a typical work day, and boost your ranking and productivity among your co-workers, supervisors, managers, boss, and customers.

My technology is simply my digital hearing aid that I use everyday at work and has helped me use the phone, field radio, meetings, have conversations with my co-workers and customers. I often get stopped (or I do the same thing myself) by my co-workers and supervisor in hallways and discuss impromptu businesses aside from the normal day to day "How ya doing?" kind of thing. Whether if you're socially shy or not, the goal should be to see the number of conversational or interactive occurences go up high enough and be seen as a productive, engaging and independent worker rather than to subconsiously or consciously build that brick wall around you and your office space.

When hearing aids (or cochlear implants) cannot work for you there are means of using technology to boost that interactive communication level. One good example is the use of a face to face communication device such as the UbiDuo. This device enabled Jason Curry, who is the CEO and founder of sComm which is the maker of UbiDuo, see his own number of communication encounters rise high enough to see that his own productivity and successes soared beyond anything he could imagined.

With the UbiDuo, I am able to have about 40 encounters with my hearing staff in my office. The picture below shows me having a conversation with Jill Meyers, the COO of sComm. Jill and I talk about 15 to 20 times a day. We are able to strike up a conversation anytime on the UbiDuo and discuss work-related issues. If I didn’t have the UbiDuo, my encounter number will almost be zero — unless I had an interpreter sitting by me all day!

Jill and I talk about 15 to 20 times a day. We are able to strike up a conversation anytime on the UbiDuo and discuss work-related issues. If I didn’t have the UbiDuo, my encounter number will almost be zero — unless I had an interpreter sitting by me all day!

If you work with a person who is deaf or hard of hearing, do you want their encounter number to be 40 or 50 instead of zero? The only time that a deaf or hard of hearing person ideally could have a face-to-face encounter with a hearing person is when they have an interpreter. As I’ve mentioned before, we are not trying to replace interpreters, but we are trying to increase the number of encounters for a deaf or hard of hearing person when an interpreter is not available.

The UbiDuo fills the gap when an interpreter is not available by increasing their number of encounters in professional or social situations. If you are deaf or hard of hearing, what do you want your encounter number to be?

Jason raised a very important point. If you are deaf or hard of hearing, what do you want your encounter number with hearing people be in your work setting? Exactly what kind of communication or assistive technology do you need that would help boost your number of interactive occurrences at your place of work? Each deaf or hard of hearing person's way of communicating varies from one to another depending on work and office settings. So, finding the right technology to suit your communication needs is the most important thing you can do for yourself, and your career.

Thumbs of Fury.... the fastest deaf Blackberry text user?

Do you think you have what it takes to type 75 wpm (words per minute) on a Blackberry phone QWERTY keyboard? Well, Mark Rejhon, a deaf Blackberry smart phone user thumbs his way into YouTube fame (not smashingly famous but you get my drift) my texting out words with his two thumbs at a rate of 75 wpm. Now, my little birdie tells me that perhaps a similar contest may take place later this year using only the Blackberry smartphone's QWERTY keyboard to become the fastest "thumberry" person alive, and win cash prizes. There's a twist to this contest I'm hearing but won't explain until later (if it is true about the contest and all). So, I guess there's time to practice and get your "thumberry" into hyperdrive. Meanwhile, enjoy Mark's "Thumbs of Fury" as he thumbs his way to 75 wpm.


Link to YouTube video

Texting and Carpal Tunnel Syndrome...a danger to deaf people?

In a Foxnews story a 16 year girl was diagnosed with Carpal Tunnel Syndrome of her wrists recently lost some feelings in her hands and was unable to pick up certain objects. This was due to excessive texting, constraining her fingers, hands and wrists over a smart phone keyboard which eventually affected her nerves in her wrists. This is known as "Repetitive Strain Injury" (RSI). Along with this affliction, it's not uncommon for many text users to experience thumb pain known as Blackberry Thumb.

Since texting is the number one communication method among most Deaf (or culturally deaf) and deaf cell phone users it comes with an added risk for those who also communicate preferably through signing. This is perhaps true among teens who are among the most prolific group of all phone texting users.

Teenagers sending and receiving an average of 80 text messages each day may be vulnerable to repetitive stress injuries of the thumb, according to the New York Times. As with Blackberry Thumb, compulsive texting can cause cramping, pain or numbness. While previous reports have stated that teens seem largely immune to Blackberry Thumb and that problems (like tendonitis) tend to crop up in patients in their 40s and 50s, the long-term effects of frequent texting are unknown. Ergonomics researchers are just beginning to study texting's impact, according to the Times.

Here are some statistics on texting:

* 72.2% of wireless users have paid for SMS packages. This equates to 203 million Americans.
* 57% of wireless users 13+ are considered regular text message users.
* There has been a 107% increase in text message use in the USA in the past year.
* 2.5 billion text messages are sent each day in the USA.
*More text messages are sent per phone than phone calls. The average
text messages used per month is 357 compared to 204 cell phone calls.
*15 million Americans used video on their cell phones in quarter two, 2008.
*138 million Americans have sent a text message in the past three months.

Not only are short texting popular you have Instant Messaging (IM) that are much more heavily used with longer conversations than short messages seen in SMS. On Facebook alone some 1 billion IMs are sent each day. Chatting or texting gives users greater privacy and are done in silence as opposed to talking on their cell phones heard by anybody within an ear shot.

The number of smart phones sold is rapidly on the rise so will the amount of texting/chatting that will increasingly merge URL linking to videos, music, webpages, and mobisodes/webisodes (and you thought TV soap operas were bad?)into their everyday smart phone communication. Which means more conversations using the QWERTY keyboard on smart phones to communicate.

Will this be a good thing or bad for deaf/hh smart phone users? Will we see an increase on fingers and hands related injuries or pain because of the constant texting that could affect deaf/hh people who signs? Are companies who offfer short text messaging or Instant Messaging be liable for people's hands and fingers injuries? Or are the makers of QWERTY keypads for smart phones be responsible for the supposedly "poor" ergonomics design?

Who is ultimately responsible?

The answer is that the smart phone users are the ones who are ultimately responsible for the health of their hands, wrists and fingers. Whether a person is prone to injuries or not there are ways to reduce the chances of injuries, pain or discomfort when it comes to texting or chatting on their smart phone.

If it's bad and quite painful, take a "Sabbatical" break for a few weeks off. This is almost like going cold turkey but if it's affecting your signing ability and that it is painful, your body is telling you an important message and that is to stop! If that's seems "impossible" then work out a plan to reduce the amount of time you use your smart phone. Include other exercises to help your hands, fingers and wrists.

Virgin Mobile has a website on exercises you can do to help alleviate the pain and discomfort. Or perhaps buy a contraption that supposedly helps strengthen your hands and fingers. But a cheap and simple sure-fire way of strengthening your hands and fingers is to get a bucket of sand and do some sand digging and finger extension exercises, among other exercises seen here.

The responsibility is yours alone on the health of your hands, fingers, and wrists when it comes to texting and chatting on your smart phones. More than likely if you are a smart phone user you will find yourself using the QWERTY keyboard more often as smart phones continue to improve and the desire to reach out and touch someone becomes even more irresistible.

Do deaf and hard of hearing people prefer Blackberry smartphones over others?

Blackberry? A better smartphone for deaf and hard of hearing? It would seem so base on my ongoing and current poll result with overwhelming differences compared to other smartphones. I suspect that with the current poll results would be the likely overall picture with Blackberry as an obvious favorite among deaf and hard of hearing users. The question is why? Why choose Blackberry? For a start, RIM (Research in Motion) is known for their addressing accessbility issues as seen on page 2 in the Blackberry Java Application Accessibility guide might be key in their philosophy and view when it comes to increasing accessibility to smartphone users:

Accessibility refers to the extent to which a product or service can be used by as many people as possible. In this context,accessibility means designing applications so that people with disabilities or impairments can use the applications on a BlackBerry® device.

When you design your BlackBerry device application, consider the following users:

• blind people
• visually impaired people
• colorblind people
• deaf people
• hearing impaired people
• speech impaired people
• people with motor impairments
• people with cognitive or learning disabilities

Like any other group of users, people with disabilities or impairments have needs, wants, and expectations about the behavior of applications. Some of the reasons to make your applications accessible to as many users as possible include the following possible benefits:
• Social responsibility: Making it easier for people with disabilities or impairments to benefit from the functionality that your application provides can promote equality and is the right thing to do.
• Market share: Ensuring that your application can be used by people with disabilities or impairments increases the number of people who can purchase and benefit from your application.
• Compliance: Addressing the applicable guidelines and regulatory requirements (such as Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act in the United States) that dictate that your application must be accessible by people with disabilities or impairments can allow you to enter certain markets.

Blackberry or other smartphone makers cannot afford to alienate the 30+ million people with hearing loss in the United States by making smartphones not-user-friendly. Though the popularity of Blackberry may be due to issue of reliability and ease of use. There was a clue in a forum back in 2004 with thread titled, "Benefits of BlackBerry for the Deaf & Hard Of Hearing" that may have initially gotten deaf and hard of hearing to consider Blackberry first. The reliability factor came up again in 2007. Though things have changed over the last 6 years since 2004 but that may be changing again in favor of Blackberry once again. Perhaps the changeover was due to a recent snafu from T-Mobile's Sidekick data plan last year. Did the well advertised snafu that affected 800,000 subscribers in 2009 helped shape the perception of Sidekick as unreliable seeing the Blackberry as the better and stable option, not to mention reliable?

Because the Sidekick didn't evolve as fast as other smartphones, many users--deaf and hearing alike--moved to the BlackBerry and other devices. And after their recent experiences, many of the remaining Sidekick users in the deaf community have said they are considering jumping ship, once their T-Mobile contracts end.

"I am going to look into Sprint's BlackBerry, which more and more deaf people are taking up, and have complimented, and (said) that it is a lot more reliable," McCraw said.

Lisa Gault, a deaf Sidekick owner in Katy, Texas, said she in an e-mail interview that she relies on the Sidekick as a means to stay in touch with her family.

"It's a way for the school to get a hold of me, if something were to occur with my son who is (not deaf)," Gault said.

Gault said that even short of an emergency, it is a problem not to get her e-mail for an extended period.

"It's annoying, as my friends think I'm ignoring them, when in reality, I didn't get the e-mails yet," Gault said. "It really put the deaf community at more of a disadvantage--more so than for hearing people, since we're so reliant on e-mail (devices) to keep in touch."

Not only it wasn't about the lack of evolving but about a total failure when the Sidekick was announced by Microsoft with grim news last year, a hard lesson when things do fail catastrophically much to consumers' horrors.

There is no official word on the death of the Sidekick from Microsoft or Tmobile, but it certainly looks bleak for the iconic device.

This week, Microsoft announced that they had lost all Sidekick user data including pictures, contacts, calendars and other information from the Danger's servers. Since the devices sync with the servers, the devices also lost the data. The Sidekick data services had amazingly been out over a week.

From what they say, after a week of investigation, there is no way to retrieve the user data. Customers will have to start over. The word on the street is that it was a Hitachi SAN upgrade failure.

But customers will be happy to know that Tmobile is offering a free month of data (not a free month of service, just the $20 unlimited data plan) for all of their information. I really hope a lot of Sidekick users used the Intellisync software that pushes data to the desktop and would have backed their data up.

T-Mobile has halted the sale of new Sidekicks. All models are now showing "temporarily out of stock" on the company's website.

No back up servers? No built in redundancy to ensure smooth flow of communication and saved data? I may not know much of what transpired but a failure of this magnitude isn't a good thing in anybody's book. Might as well see it as "DOA" and no need to try resurrect an image brand that was mortally wounded. People will jump ship because of that.

I'll continue my investigation about Blackberry among deaf and hard of hearing users and why they use the smartphone. If you're deaf or hard of hearing and use a smartphone, go to my poll and select a phone brand that you are currently using.

Blackberry Smartphones and Closed Captioning

Here's a good announcement for deaf/hh Blackberry smartphone enthusiasts who might be interested in helping or creating a closed captioned content for Blackberry smartphones which will take place this March at CSUN.

Creating Closed Captioned Content for BlackBerry Smartphones

This hands-on lab will demonstrate how you can develop, deploy and distribute accessible, close captioned multimedia content for and to BlackBerry smartphones.

Greg Fields
Research In Motion (RIM)

This will take place at the 25th Annual International Technology & Persons with Disabilities Conference in San Diego, Ca on March 22nd - 27th. Seats are limited to 31 seats. Get 'em while they're still hot!

Also, a poll for all you deaf and hard of hearing users of smartphones.

What would deaf people like to see in a cell phone?

Whatever you may call it, a cell phone, a smart phone, text phone, a wireless phone, PDA, and so on, as a deaf or hard of hearing person, explain to me and to the rest of the world out there on some of the things that you would like to see improved or added onto your phone. Or if you're in a ranting mood, explain some of the things you do not like about your phone when it comes to communicating or texting to your friends and families. And what you would hope to see in the next 5 years if you think you can predict the future on the improvements you'd expect to see in your next phone when it comes to communicating to the outside world, deaf or hearing.