Sign What!?

[Hear Again]

Wow.. Hear AGain.. Thank you so much for sharing that information. That is educational for me as well.

May I ask. How do you find interacting with the general public? Are people generally willing to help or do they act afraid?

I see so many people act afraid when they encounter a new experience in life. I'll never understand why people don't want to embrace a new learning experience and make a connection with new people they meet. One of my goals in life to to be able to travel anywhere in the world and be able to communicate with anyone that I meet. I don't like having communication barriers that stop me from learning about new friends and their culture. I want to see my children have the same attitude as they grow. I want to see them connect with anyone without letting communication barriers stop them. I want to see them overcome anything like that to make new and awesome friendships.

More often than not, people have been willing (pre-CI) to do whatever was necessary to facilitate communication. While there have been a few times where people have been afraid to use print on palm, those instances have been far and few between. Usually people start to relax after they realize how easy using any of the communication methods I've listed above are. I think the biggest fear people have about interacting with a deafblind person is knowing how to communicate with them. Once I explain the communication method(s) I use, that helps eliminate some of the initial fear. I've come across some people (pre-CI) who continue talking to me as if I will hear them, but once they discover that I'm not responding, they comply with my request.

I think it's great that you want to teach your children to be open-minded. When I have children, I want to teach them the same and to be open to a variety of experiences. I don't want them to be afraid of others simply because they use a communication method or language that is different from their own.

 

[Hear Again]

omg, it is so... u r very strong minded goin through that! i feel like such a wimp! (big time) here i am jus a new deafie, whinging n whinning like its the end of the world...wow wow

so if its ok can i ask u whats the primay way for u to communicate? and also hos do u communicate with us?
do u hav like a special kind of keyboard with braille.

thank you so much for your info, im gonna look into learning braille now
*hugs*

You're welcome -- and thank you for the compliment!

Now that I have CIs, my primary method of communication is speech. I do very well on one-on-one quiet situations, but use an FM system and Braille realtime captioning when background noise is an issue.

As for my computer, I have a screen reader called Window-Eyes which converts information that appears on the computer screen into synthesized speech. The same information is also sent to a Braille display. I'm able to navigate websites like AD by giving various keyboard commands to Window-Eyes in order to move up, down, left, right, sentence by sentence, paragraph by paragraph or page by page. My computer keyboard doesn't have any Braille markings on it except for a single dot on the letter "F" and "J" keys. As I mentioned in my earlier post, I also have a PDA for the blind (BrailleNote) which contains a word processor, scientific calculator, games and a GPS system. If I connect my BrailleNote to my computer, I can type on its Perkins-stye keyboard (a keyboard that has 6 keys) using Grade II (contracted) Braille. In this way, typing is much faster since I'm able to use abbreviations (or more accurately, short form words). For example, typing "bc" for the word "because," "p" for the word "people," "k" for the word "knowledge," etc.

Don't feel bad about feeling the way you do about your deafness. After I lost my hearing, I had a very difficult time adjusting. It wasn't until I met other deafblind people like myself and started learning alternative communication techniques that I began to understand deafblindness wasn't the end of the world. Thanks to the great role models I had and other deafblind people I met through our local support group, I began to see that I could live a happy, successful life despite deafblindness.

I think it's wonderful that you'd like to start learning Braille. Learning it as early as you can will help give you a jump start should the time ever come that you need to use it. As a deafblind person, Braille has been invaluable to me.

If you'd like some recommendations as to certain websites where one can learn Braille, let me know.