INTERNATIONAL PERSPECTIVES

VOICESVOICESALEX ANDER GRAHAM BELL ASSOCIATION FOR THE DEAF AND HARD OF HEARING

July/August 2011

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VOICESV O L T A

A L E X A N D E R G R A H A M B E L L

A S S O C I A T I O N F O R T H E D E A F A N D H A R D O F H E A R I N G

3417 VOLTA PLACE, NW, WASHINGTON, DC 20007 • WWW.AGBELL.ORG

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DepartmentsVOICES FROM AG BELL 3 Easing Financial Constraints 5 International Perspectives 36 Conversations with Alex Graham

LEARNING THE LANGUAGE OF ELEMENTARY ARITHMETIC 38 Division

TIPS FOR PARENTS 40 Make a Book and Make It Fun

HEAR OUR VOICES 42 Marhaba! (بحرم)

In Every Issue 2 WANT TO WRITE FOR VOLTA VOICES?

7 VOICES CONTRIBUTORS

8 SOUNDBITES

44 DIRECTORY OF SERVICES

52 LIST OF ADVERTISERS

Features14 Parents Heard Around the World

By Susan Boswell, CAELearn how parents all over the world come together to support their child’s development of listening and spoken language.

20 Preparing a Global Network of LSL ProfessionalsBy Melody FelzienRead about how different countries are addressing a shortage of qualifi ed professionals to provide listening and spoken language development opportunities to children with hearing loss.

30 Have Hearing Loss, Will TravelBy Rachel DubinA long-time and well-travelled AG Bell member offers her advice for securing access while traveling.

34 Honor and DutyBy Melody FelzienRead the inspirational story of an Israeli soldier who, in spite of a hearing loss and exemption, has secured a successful career in the Israeli Defensive Forces.

SPECIAL SECTION

26 Recognizing the Generosity of Our Donors AG Bell thanks its 2010 supporters and donors.

JULY/AUGUST 2011

VOLUME 18

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12 VOLTA VOICES • JULY/AUGUST 2011

SOUND of disability discrimination or failure to accommodate discrimination by Wells Fargo, please visit www.ada.gov/wells_fargo/ to learn more about the settlement and the claims process.

Drug Protects Against Hearing Loss from Cochlear Implant Electrode InsertionNew research presented at the recent Midwinter Meeting of the Association for Research in Otolaryngology (ARO) provides further evidence of a new drug’s ability to protect the cochlea during cochlear implant surgery. As cochlear implantation is an invasive procedure, parts of the cochlea may be damaged mechanically or through various other effects, such as oxida-tive stress and infl ammation. While

these effects are of less importance in cases of patients who were already profoundly deaf prior to implantation, protection from insertion trauma is important whenever residual hearing

can be preserved. When the drug, AM-111, is administered within a therapeutic window after the surgery it can effectively protect cochlear hair cells and neurons that would otherwise

Catherine McNally, an AG Bell board member and bilateral cochlear implant user, was featured in the May edition of Washingtonian Magazine. The article, “Tech Titans 2011: People to Watch,” highlights McNally’s Keen Guides, a service that provides downloadable captioned video tours of museums all over the country. To read the full article, visit www.washingtonian.com/print/articles/6/0/19189.html.

On May 11, AG Bell members Rachel Dubin and Caitlin Parton received the National Organization for Research Foundation’s 2011 Young Advocate Award. Dubin and Parton were recognized for their efforts lobbying and testifying for Congressional funding for the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders and their continued involvement in deaf-related issues.

PEOPLE IN THE NEWS

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be lost forever. The study was led by Adrien Eshraghi, M.D., at the University of Miami Hearing Research Laboratory.

Purple Communications Eliminates 10-Digit VRS NumbersPurple Communications, Inc., a provider of communications for people who are deaf or hard of hearing, has eliminated the need for Video Relay Service (VRS) consumers to use a different 10-digit phone number for each device from which they choose to make or receive VRS calls. With Purple Communications’ one-number technology, Purple VRS users have the freedom and convenience of using only one 10-digit phone number with a variety of different devices of their choice. Because VRS customers

usually have several different devices they use to make calls – like laptops, computers, smartphones and other platforms – other providers require them to use a different 10-digit number for each device. To learn more about this service, visit http://purple.us/dayinthelife/.

Mill Neck Manor Hosts WWH Annual MeetingOn April 26, Mill Neck Manor hosted representatives from over 33 countries participating in the World Wide Hearing Foundation (WHH) 2011 Annual General Meeting. The mission of WWH is to promote and enable better hearing worldwide through the provision of affordable hearing aids and services. About 30 countries from around the world will be represented, including

Brazil, China, Jordan and Canada. Mill Neck Foundation, Inc., is a nonprofi t group dedicated to enhancing the quality of life for people who are deaf, or who have other special needs, through excellence in individually designed educational, vocational or spiritual programs and services. For more information, visit www.millneck.org.

House Research Institute to Host Annual Coalition for Global Hearing Health ConferenceOn Sept. 8-9, the House Research Institute will host the 2nd Annual Coalition for Global Hearing Health Conference. For more information about presentations and attending this event, visit http://coalitionforglobalhearinghealth.org.

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� ere are 1 million people who have hearing loss in Spain and more than 8,500 people who have received cochlear implants, 60 percent of whom are children. Yet, this number pales in comparison to the number of people who have received implants in the United States. Part of the website’s mission is to provide translated articles of a practical or investigative nature as a resource for Spanish-speaking families. T-oigo.com has collaborated with Volta Voices to translate several articles into Spanish, making them available to people in Spain and Latin America.

T-oigo.com also organizes meetings and free events that are attended by families from all over Spain. For the summer

event last year, Paul Jacobs, who works in Australia with Graeme Clark, the inven-tor of the cochlear implant, came to Spain to speak to parents while their children participated in activities organized by Fernanda Hinojosa, a certifi ed Listening and Spoken Language Specialist. More than 200 people participated in the event and gathered to share their experiences and dance to the beat of “La Macarena.” � is past May, Betty Sackett from the John Tracy Clinic in Los Angeles, Calif., trav-eled to Spain to present on bilingual educa-tion for children with cochlear implants and hearing aids.

� e website seeks to break down myths of bilingualism and children with hearing loss. Learning multiple languages is not only possible for children with hearing loss, it is essential to ensuring that our children have the same opportunities as their peers with typical hearing to become citizens of the world.

—Contributed by Dale Sindell, founder and director of t-oigo.com and a native New Yorker who has lived in Spain for 25 years with her Spanish husband and their three children. Visit www.t-oigo.com for addi-tional information.

Partners for a Greater VoicePerspectives from Developing CountriesTemperatures soar to over 90 degrees and sweat trickles down the face of a young mother, who sits alone. “� ey say I ate too many rotten eggs. It’s my fault that my child has hearing loss,” she says. Another

mother in the group says that the ghost of her uncle haunts her. “He has cursed my child with deafness.” � ese and other mis-perceptions about the causes of hearing loss abound in many parts of the world.

I have heard many stories like this in impoverished areas of developing countries as part of Partners for a Greater Voice, a nonprofi t organization that works in developing countries with parents, caregiv-ers, teachers and professionals to help children with hearing loss develop spoken language and achieve educational success. Since 2003, I’ve talked with more than 500 parents in the Dominican Republic, India, Honduras and Armenia.

Mothers may suspect their young child is deaf, but there are few professionals in the vicinity that are qualifi ed to evaluate a child’s hearing. Parents are often lost, not knowing what to do. Even if parents are able to obtain a hearing evaluation for their child, they may have no money for hear-ing aids, transportation or follow-up care as many parents in the developing world struggle to meet basic needs, such as food and hygiene. Public schools may not enroll a child who is deaf, and the school for the deaf may be far away from home.

Some parents abandon their child in orphanages, unable to physically or emo-tionally care for themselves, let alone their child who is deaf. I’ve seen parents hide their child in the house for years, praying or hoping the hearing loss will be cured. In the Dominican Republic, a parent told me that she had never met another parent of a child who is deaf in her town. Yet on the same day we tested her 14-year-old daugh-

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In Honduras, 26-year-old Yessenia packages and sells spices to help pay for food and works to prevent foreclosure on her tiny house and care for her child who is deaf. Her isolation from the community is common, and she did not know where to turn for help when Partners for a Greater Voice reached out to her. Yessenia now receives counseling and support with each major step in caring for her child’s hearing loss: evaluation, school place-ment, technology access and habilitation. Her daughter, Angie, is a budding artist at 9 years

old. She is receiving a good education, developing language and developing self-confi dence. Angie is changing the perception of deafness for those around her.

Success Story