Police: Hearing-impaired teen attacked at Forestview High

Source Link – Police: Hearing-impaired teen attacked at Forestview High

A Gastonia teenager was charged Friday with attacking a hearing-impaired teen at Forestview High School.

Joshua F. Carle, 17, of 554 Burlington Court, struck an 18-year-old boy in the back of the head, knocking out his hearing implants, Gaston County Police Sgt. Billy Downey wrote in a magistrate’s order affidavit. Arrest documents did not state whether the teens are students at Forestview.

Carle was charged with assault/battery on a handicapped person and released to his parents’ custody.

Hearing loss not exclusively a boomer issue

Source Link – Hearing loss not exclusively a boomer issue

Last month, I answered a question from a woman whose dad, a hearing impaired member of the boomer generation, refused to get hearing aids, thus missing communication with his family and grandchildren.

I cited a survey conducted by Energizer Batteries on hearing loss. They surveyed more than 1,000 boomer generation adults who were suffering hearing loss. Only 72 percent admitted their hearing loss and only 11 percent chose to wear hearing aids to correct the problem. Those with hearing problems who didn’t get hearing aids most typically said they didn’t like the way the hearing aids looked or felt and they believed wearing them would make them look or feel older.

Paradoxically, nearly all of them were willing to wear glasses or contacts to correct their vision. In response to my column, I received the letter below. My response follows the letter.

Q. I can understand why the questioner suffers under the delusion that “hearing aid denial” is a boomer issue, as her father is in his 50s. But why did you support that view? This is far from a problem unique to boomers.

My husband and I are both boomers and we had that exact problem with his father, who is most definitely not a boomer (born in the ’20s). Throughout the whole of his grandchildren’s childhoods, he steadfastly refused to: 1. have the tubes placed in his ears to facilitate drainage (he was convinced he would have a long, blue tube trailing outside each ear); and 2. refused hearing aids because he was convinced they were still as huge and bulky as when he was younger. As a consequence, he missed almost everything his grandchildren said and had to have my husband or me repeat it to him. Nothing we said would sway him.

He finally agreed to hearing aids a few years ago, after he passed 80 years old. It is now possible to carry on a conversation with him. But he missed my children’s childhood and I know that it still interferes with their relationship, as he has no idea who they really are.

Hearing aid denial affects all ages and all generations!

A. I absolutely agree. It’s not just a generational issue, except it is much more widespread for the very large boomer generation. They were also the first generation to have their hearing so widely affected by listening to extremely loud music. Hearing aid technology has improved dramatically. Hearing aids are also much smaller and less obvious, so please encourage hearing-impaired family members to give them a try.

For additional information on hearing health, go to www.energizer.com/livehealthy or search the Internet. You will be pleasantly surprised to find abundant information on a variety of hearing aids in all price ranges.

Deaf boy, 14, was badly hurt in SUV smash

Source Link – Deaf boy, 14, was badly hurt in SUV smash

A 14-year-old deaf boy remained in intensive care yesterday after an SUV smashed into a Hamilton courier office on Friday and pinned him against a wall.

Initial Police reports stated that a 25-year-old employee of International Bonded Couriers (IBC) had been taken to hospital after the freak accident.

However, it emerged yesterday that the victim was in fact a 14-year-old summer student on his last day at work. His mother told The Royal Gazette: “He’s a deaf child. He has injuries to his abdomen his colon was torn and his bowel was punctured.

“He was working behind the counter at the time and he was a direct hit. The SUV pushed him through a wall and he was pinned there.”

The mother who asked that her name and her son’s name be kept private also revealed: “He’s a summer student employee through the community school initiative and it was his very last day. He was supposed to go to a ceremony that night to get his pay cheque and certificate.”

She said he remained in a lot of pain in the intensive care unit yesterday, but was in a stable condition and making good progress after surgery for his injuries. He is expected to remain in hospital for another week.

The mother believes that a second young female summer student also suffered a leg injury. However, although a Police spokesman acknowledged yesterday that the original Police report was inaccurate, he denied that a second child was also hurt.

He explained: “Initial information on Friday morning suggested that the driver of the SUV and the injured party were a 35-year-old woman and a 25-year-old male IBC employee respectively. However, subsequently it was ascertained that there were actually two injured parties, a 24-year-old Warwick woman (minor injury) and a 14-year-old young man from St. George’s (more seriously injured), both employed by IBC. The driver of the SUV was a 34-year-old St. George’s woman. The Police Media Relations Department acknowledges the error and apologizes for this unintentional mistake.”

The accident is believed to have happened when the 34-year-old woman, who had picked up a package, attempted to reverse her Honda CRV away from the door of the office on Park Road just before 10 a.m. According to witnesses, the vehicle appears to have slipped into forward gear and ploughed through the glass storefront.

Anthony Easton, a customer in the store at the time, told The Royal Gazette afterwards: “I was almost killed. It just missed me. I had no time to respond to what was going through my head. The car was just there. There was no time to move, to run. The first thing I said was ‘what happened?’ and immediately I was worried about the young man behind the counter.”

The cost of the damage to the store is expected to run into tens of thousands of dollars. A notice at the premises yesterday stated that it remained closed due to the unforseen circumstances.

I’m deaf… and they are dumb

Source Link – I’m deaf… and they are dumb

DOPEY benefits bosses sent a 59-year-old deaf man with lung disease and arthritis to train as a BOUNCER.

Jobcentre staff were so eager to get disabled Joe Seggie off incapacity payments and back to work they paid out £500 of taxpayers’ cash to put him through an official door stewards’ course.

But Joe has had no luck getting work turfing rowdy revellers out of pubs.

Last night Joe, of Broxburn, West Lothian, said: “When the Jobcentre staff suggested the course I agreed to it and signed up.

“I was a wee bit naive. I’m no Superman.

“The latest interview I had was last week and the guy told me ‘no way’.

“The one before that told me I would be an insurance liability.”

Joe – who was born deaf but has had 10 per cent of his hearing restored by ops and uses hearing aids – says he is struggling to survive now his £30 a week incapacity benefit has stopped.

The dad-of-five – who is also due to have surgery because of osteoarthritis in his foot – said he was declared fit to work after passing basic physical tests.

Joe – whose last job was as a McDonald’s handyman – added: “I worked all my life. I don’t want to be a scrounger.

“It’s alcoholics and junkies who are getting all the help – maybe I should drink a bottle of vodka a day?”

The Department of Work and Pensions would not comment.

Talk will focus on resources for the hearing-impaired

Source Link – Talk will focus on resources for the hearing-impaired

Gary W. Talley knows firsthand the difficulties of being deaf or hard of hearing.

Talley lost his hearing, but he “hears” through a signer.

Talley, the outreach and community-services programs manager at the Virginia Department for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing, will talk tomorrow about being deaf and will provide information for those who are deaf, hard of hearing or simply interested in the topic.

His “All About Deafness” session, which is the focus of Synergy Club’s luncheon meeting, will detail what resources are available and the latest technologies and gadgets to assist those with hearing problems.

One device alerts people who can’t hear. It shakes their bed and flashes lights in every room when a phone or doorbell rings, a baby cries or a smoke detector starts screeching.

Talley will demonstrate that device and others. People who qualify financially can get devices for free after trying them out for 30 days.

Talley also will discuss the department’s programs and its outreach efforts.

The Synergy Club meeting starts at noon. It will be held at Beauregard’s Thai Room, 103 E. Cary St. in downtown Richmond.

Buy your own lunch for about $10. Park free in the restaurant’s lot.

There is no need to register.

Project Deaf India: Helping Those with Hearing Loss

Source Link – Project Deaf India: Helping Those with Hearing Loss

Dr. Raj Desai, founder of Project Deaf India, is a man on a mission.

Recently Dr. Desai sat down with AudiologyOnline’s Managing Editor Dr. Carolyn Smaka for an interview to discuss his mission and Project Deaf India.

“I retired in 1990,” Dr. Desai said ironically. “With retirement, I saw two alternatives – play golf or become a beach bum.” Neither appealed to this energetic man who, instead, in retirement, turned his focus on helping others through the foundation of Project Deaf India – a program that helps Indians with hearing loss in a wide variety of ways.

“When I retired, with my daughter Anjali as my inspiration, I decided that I should do some work with the poor, deaf children of India.” Anjali was born profoundly deaf. “As you know, India has one of the highest number of deaf people, children particularly, in the whole world.

So I founded Project Deaf India, and I’m very, very happy that after 10 years of working hard, the project is paying off.” So much for Dr. Desai’s “retirement,” but clearly, this energetic ambassador for better hearing is doing something he clearly enjoys. His excitement for Project Deaf India is evident when given the opportunity to share the project’s history, activities and goals.

The Roots of Project Deaf India

The project began with a newspaper article Dr. Desai received from a friend. In it, the reporter wrote about a remote village in which 20% – 30% of the population was deaf. Dr. Desai explains. “Even as a doctor I couldn’t believe why there should be about 30% deaf out of [a population of] 500 in this distant village in India. Sure, we all know that India has poverty, India has hygiene and sanitation problems, but all of this couldn’t seem to account for 30% deafness.”

Dr. Desai was determined to conduct some field research. He received help from the National Institute of Health, and cooperation from the Indian Institute of Medical Sciences in Delhi.

“Despite all of the obstacles – no electricity, no running water, no paved roads to these remote villages – we went…and investigated. We made a video entitled “Silent Village” that got a lot of attention, both from the Rotary [Rotary International], who did an article on it for a Rotary publication that is distributed throughout the world, and from others. That’s how Project Deaf India started,” this humanitarian explained in his interview with AudiologyOnline.

Readers can view “Silent Village” at ProjectDeafIndia.org to learn more about the work of Dr. Desai’s team in discovering how these village populations communicated – something required to carry on everything from commerce to celebrations.

Desai explained the unique problem he and villagers face. “Sign language is different around the world. There’s Japanese sign language, French sign language, American sign language and so forth.

India is a challenge because it has 38 languages recognized by the government in the whole country. They are totally different languages. If you live in the south, you don’t understand the language of the north and vice-versa. At the present time, most deaf people in India now use a combination of body language and a type of sign language combined together”

It doesn’t take much thought to realize that (1) this is hardly an effective, accurate means of communicating and (2) the deaf population remains isolated, even among the individuals who make up the deaf and heard of hearing groups within the country.

The difference in language presents a stumbling block not found among deaf students in America. Whether from the Deep South or the Great Northwest, the most recognized form of sign language that is used and taught is the United States is American Sign Language (ASL). According to Karen Nakamura of DeafLibrary.org, ASL is a “complex visual-spatial language that is used by the Deaf community in the United States and English-speaking parts of Canada. It is a linguistically complete, natural language”; however, shares no grammatical similarities to English.
A Unified Sign Language for India: Bollywood to the rescue

“For the past 10 years,” explained Dr. Desai, “a colleague of mine has been working on making a common sign language based on Hindi [one of the 38 recognized languages].

The purpose of my deciding to use Hindi as the basis for a common sign language was very simple. India has the largest film industry in the world, producing about 1,000 to 2,000 films every year. Everybody loves these extremely popular films – it is the most common form of entertainment. If all people understand Hindi in movies, why shouldn’t they speak Hindi in sign language?”
The Many Objectives of Project Deaf India

Mother and baby await newborn hearing screening

In addition to the creation of a unified signing language, Project Deaf India has set a number of goals for its dedicated staff of hearing professionals lead by Dr. Desai.

“The first goal was early detection of deafness and intervention. This is what is now common practice in the UK and US. Any child that is born in a hospital or any birthing center is tested for deafness, everywhere in the United States. As you know, the portable equipment that is used to screen babies for hearing loss costs about $5,000 or so and the results are very accurate.”

Dr. Desai continued. “Of course follow-up, such as with intervention and amplification, is also critical. In India, many children are born with hearing loss that is medically treatable, so in a matter of a few months, many children can be helped just with intervention or surgery.

In the US, many children who are identified at birth are fit with hearing aids by age 1 – 2 months. This is very important for the development of speech, language and cognition, and is of course the long term goal in India as well.

But my second immediate goal with Project Deaf India was to decrease the large incidence of deafness. India has a National Vaccination Plan but it does not include measles and rubella vaccination. When they are included, it will decrease deafness and also blindness drastically in India.”

Dr. Desai was able to speak with the president of India, not a politician but a man of science, but as Dr. Desai puts it, “I thought my words fell on deaf ears.”
Project Deaf India Grows

That’s why Dr. Desai was a bit surprised one day. “I heard from a fellow Rotarian in India who told me, “You know, your projects are going very well.” And I could hardly believe it. So I approached the chief of the India Health Ministry, and she confirmed it. “Yes,” she said, “we have started a program called “Prevention and Early Detection of Deafness in India”.

Dr. Desai tackled another major problem through Project Deaf India. “One major obstacle to the goal of early detection and intervention was that there were no trained audiologists in India.

There are only 1,000 audiologists in the whole country of one billion people. Neither is there ENT (ear, nose and throat) doctors to detect deafness accurately. So this program that has been started, at the cost of approximately $700 million, will train enough ENT doctors and audiologists by 2010, which is just around the corner from now.”

Dr. Dave Citron, audiologist and owner of South Shore Hearing Center near Boston, and his team were instrumental in beginning the organized process of implementing a newborn hearing screening and follow-up program.”

Working through the Rotary, Dr. Citron’s efforts to implement an early diagnostic protocol is complete and Project Deaf India continues to not only meet hearing health objectives, but to create new goals to improve the hearing of India’s one billion citizens.

Deaf, but distinction no bar

Source Link – Deaf, but distinction no bar

While for many engineering students clearing the four years without an ATKT is a dream, Sagar Patil, a 24-year-old hearing-impaired student from Father Agnel College, Bandra, achieved the feat with ease.

Patil, who is suffering from profound deafness, scored 77% (distinction) in final-year university exams. “I was determined to score well. Some colleges were of the opinion that I shouldn’t be opting for engineering with my defect. I wanted to prove them wrong,” said Patil, who is also suffering from a minor speech disability. A Prabhadevi resident, he has a hearing defect since birth, and went to a special school in Dadar. He was the second highest scorer in the city under the handicap category in SSC exams, which he passed with 84%.

He was always interested in engineering and hence took admission in a four-year diploma course at VJTI, Matunga. He understood some of the concepts by lip reading his professors. Taking notes and tallying them later with those of his friends also helped him a lot, feels his mother Nutan.

Sagar believed in self-study and refused to go to coaching classes. “Sagar was never satisfied with anything he achieved. After his diploma, he wanted to get a degree as well.

So he took admission in the second-year Bachelor of Engineering course at Father Agnel’s, and now after scoring 77%, he wants to do his masters abroad,” said his mother.
To help her son, Nutan had took a course in teaching hearing-impaired students when Sagar was in school. She was even planning to take up a job in teaching, but gave up the idea as she wanted her son to study well.

Since the Patil family cannot afford his higher studies, Sagar has planned to work for two years. However, this effort is not without its hurdles, as he has had to face discrimination from prospective employers. “Noting his performance in class, many employers who came for campus placements used to shortlist his name. But during interviews, he was rejected. It frustrated him a lot, but he recovered after a leading firm appointed him as a trainee,” said Nutan.

Deaf children tune in to lessons at hi-tech school

Source Link – Deaf children tune in to lessons at hi-tech school

Mainstream classes cater for special needs

When children enter a class, their hearing devices tune in to a frequency on which the teacher transmits

Five years ago, Landi Maphumulo communicated with hand gestures and by muttering.

Today, the Grade 4 pupil has not only dropped his hand signals, but he can also string together full sentences and communicate with his audiologist without looking at the teacher to lip-read.

Nine-year-old Landi, who contracted meningitis as a baby and lost his hearing as a result, is one of 76 hearing-impaired pupils attending a mainstream private school of 462 pupils, the Eduplex Primary School and Training Centre in Queenswood, Pretoria. The school operates from potty-trained toddlers in Grade 0000 to Grade 7.

Outside, in the “interactive garden”, where the plants have name tags , pupils chat among themselves, and inside the classrooms they listen intently to their teachers.

But if you look — and listen — more closely, you realise that it is not just another school.

Here, the hexagonal classrooms have been acoustically treated to accommodate the school’s hard-of-hearing pupils.

Some of them have not yet mastered speech — but are well on their way to doing so, thanks to the facilities at the school, believed to be the only one of its kind in South Africa.

Other schools such as the Carel du Toit Centre in Cape Town — where deaf children learn to speak — offer similar services, but have less technology and cater exclusively for the hearing-impaired.

According to headmaster Jannie de Goede, Eduplex has a “very special model of inclusion” — it is an ordinary, mainstream school where hearing-impaired children follow exactly the same curriculum and learn alongside their hearing peers.

Here, children wearing hearing aids and those who have had cochlea implants are taught to listen and talk in an environment set up for the deaf.

The centre’s assistant director, Jan Grobbelaar, said the classrooms had even been specifically designed in a hexagon shape — representing a bee hive — to fit in individual rooms where teachers have one-on-one sessions with the deaf pupils after school.

“The classes have been acoustically treated. The walls have pin-board carpets for acoustics,” he said.

“There are more lights than normal, so the teachers’ lips are always visible.”

Each class has its own FM system. When children enter a classroom, their hearing devices automatically tune in to its radio frequency .

The teachers wear FM transmitters which amplify their voices and block out other ambient sound. The device has a 30m range.

“The challenge is that the teachers have to remember to switch off the transmitters when they sit in the staff room,” joked De Goede.

The hearing-impaired pupils follow the same curriculum as their hearing peers, but also get extra tuition after school.

They have sessions with the centre’s four audiologists, who also make sure that their hearing devices are in working order on a daily basis.

“It is very important that the deaf children aren’t taking time away from the hearing children,” said audiologist Jayne Barnard.

An international consultant in natural auditory education for the hearing-impaired, Dr Morag Clarke, said technology had made it easy for deaf children to hear, and learn to speak and make use of the spoken language.

“You need to be able to speak well to read well, and you have to read well to do well academically,” she said.

Having hearing-impaired children at a mainstream school is in line with the government’s policy on inclusive education for special needs pupils.

However, not all support the idea of teaching deaf children to talk without using sign language as well.

Ingrid Parkin, director of deaf education at the Deaf Federation of South Africa, said: “A strong language foundation leads to good reading ability, but nowhere does it say that this strong language foundation has to be spoken language .

“If we were to adopt an exclusively spoken approach, we would be excluding the deaf child from the deaf community”.

Paul Simmons, a lecturer in South African sign language at the University of the Witwatersrand, compared teaching the deaf to hear to making blind children see.

“ One teaches the blind child to adapt with Braille, walking canes, dogs for the blind,” he said.

“Do those adaptations require the use of sight? Obviously not. Such an approach should also be made with the deaf child. So what approach works? Sign language.”

An argument for the continued teaching of ASL to deaf children

Source Link – An argument for the continued teaching of ASL to deaf children

This is an interesting commentary on the need for deaf children to be bilingual. The video is presented in ASL, so I’ve included the transcript below:

Hi! I would like to share about the article written by Francois Grosjean who provided his perspective by researching Deaf children. The article mentioned that ASL should be the primary language of a Deaf child. Despite the use of various technological aids ( i.e. cochlear implants), sign language is mandatory period. Why? I will explain the reasons for you to think about it.

When hearing babies are born, they normally acquire language in the very first years of life that their parents communicate with them and that babies receive information by listening to surrounding sound environment such as T.V., radio, people having conversations, etc. Even some parents sign with their hearing babies making it more accessible. “Language in turn is an important means of establishing and solidifying social and personal ties between the child and his/her parents. What is true of the hearing child must also become true of the Deaf child.”

It is crucial for Deaf children to see a visual, 100 percent accessible, natural signed language that they are able to completely comprehend the information as they grow up.
But is this really happening for all Deaf children? Unfortunately, no. Why? Organizations like AG Bell, AVT (Auditory Verbal Therapy), etc. think it is not necessary to include ASL but focus on listening and speaking ONLY. That only approach HURTS! I will explain to you why.

First of all, we don’t know for sure if a Deaf baby will grasp information completely through auditory. All cochlear implant users don’t pick up the information in the same way. We know that some hearing aid users have developed strong listening skills and some of them don’t at all in spite of having the same decibel loss. Too often, people assume by exposing one language (oral) would do just fine until the moment they realize that this approach did not work. So what happens to that child? “He or she falls BEHIND in his/her development, be it linguistic, cognitive, social, or personal.” It becomes TOO LATE!

This issue is disturbing to DBC that this oral only approach is GAMBLING the Deaf child’s life away from academic development, social development, healthy emotional development, etc. We need to advocate more strongly on having both languages, ASL and English, for all Deaf children.

The responsibility, the duty and the goal of DBC are to make sure that ALL Deaf babies from the start have access to natural sign language that is acquired naturally as much as possible where two-way communication takes place. For a Deaf child to bridge to English (spoken English and/or written English), the most important part for academic success and future professional achievements is to master written English. Once a Deaf child is the ability to write well, he/she can do anything!

By using one language (oral) approach and excluding ASL with those who use listening assistive devices, is it a right way? No! We know that obviously oralism involves RISK! BET! GAMBLE!

Having the ability to develop cognitive/personal skills will be minimized when using oral only approach. Why limit the Deaf child’s ability? He or she would have developed much more advanced in these areas (linguistic, cognitive, social and personal). Oral approach with most Deaf children is not perceived as communicating in a two-way street in a natural way. Research states that for a Deaf child to use oral only approach impedes communication and that the daunting effort to develop speech skills is consumed rather than focusing on developing cognitive skills. When using ASL, “it allows the young Deaf child and his/her parents to communicate early, and fully, on the condition that they acquire it quickly.” ASL play an important role in the Deaf child’s cognitive and social development and it will help him/her acquire knowledge about the world. They can express about anything that is much easier and clearer for them to communicate.

Hearing parents can learn signs and they need to get more support. What DBC wants to see happening out there is the establishment of ASL Therapy Centers. We don’t even have one here in America but we always have numerous speech therapy centers even hotline phone numbers where immediate attention can be given. More fund is needed to establish such centers where support to facilitate hearing parents’ signing skills will be much more possible in the future.

In the meantime, DBC has been sharing an important message that every Deaf baby has the right to sign. Why is this so important? There are numerous benefits and opportunities using ASL when a Deaf child grows up. In this case, opportunities are more of GUARANTEES.

BILINGUAL (ASL/ENGLISH) GUARANTEES A DEAF CHILD’S FUTURE!

The Let Them Hear Foundation Unveils New Web Resource for Parents of and Professionals working with Children with Disabilities

The Let Them Hear Foundation Unveils New Web Resource for Parents of and Professionals working with Children with Disabilities

The Let Them Hear Foundation (LTHF) announced today its creation of a new Special Education Resource website for parents of children with disabilities and for professionals who would like to learn about the special education services that are available to children with disabilities (IDEA.letthemhear.org).

Since 2004, LTHF has helped individuals denied coverage by their health insurers obtain hearing related surgeries, services, devices, and other technologies. Specific appeal areas include cochlear implants, Baha® implants for children with conductive hearing loss, atresia repair, microtia reconstruction, balance disorders, and other hearing related devices and surgery.

Director of the LTHF Advocacy Program Amy Brown, J.D., states, “After receiving hearing devices and services, many children encountered difficulty accessing the early intervention, or special education and related services to which they were entitled under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act of 2004 (IDEA 2004).”

In response to this problem, LTHF chose to help children with hearing loss receive the services for which they were eligible under IDEA. Ms. Brown comments, “The services provided under IDEA are designed to meet the unique needs of children with educationally significant disabilities, including hearing loss, and to prepare them for further education, employment and independent living.”

The website will aid parents and the professionals working with children affected by any of the thirteen disability categories defined by IDEA 2004, as well as provide information relating to the specific category of hearing impairment, including deafness.

LTHF Advocacy Program Advocate Taylor Hoang, J.D. explains, “The special education website explains key concepts of IDEA 2004. IDEA topic summaries, which are also available in Spanish, describe the early intervention, special education and related services available to IDEA-eligible children.”

Some of the topics discussed include Free Appropriate Public Education (FAPE), Least Restrictive Environment (LRE), Individual Family Service Plan (IFSP), Individual Education Program (IEP), Assistive Technology Devices and Services, and Due Process. The IDEA topic summaries provide both general explanation of subject matter and applicable legal language of IDEA 2004 and its implementing Regulations.

LTHF Advocacy Program Advocate Sharon Rogers, J.D. says, “After reading any IDEA topic summary, the reader will have a general understanding of the subject matter covered, the relevant law as it applies to the subject, as well as practical tips for both parents of children and the professionals serving the needs of these children with disabilities.”

Regarding information collection for the website, Ms. Hoang states, “Attorneys researched various websites, including the Department of Education IDEA webpage. Private attorneys, specializing in Special Education law, were consulted when needed. The layout and organization of the topic summaries resemble a legal brief but are written in parent-friendly language. The reader can also click on a summary hyperlink that takes them to the corresponding law section on the Department of Education website or other websites as appropriate.”

Founder and former Director of the Advocacy Program Sheri Byrne-Haber, J.D. points out, “IDEA is intended to be implemented the same everywhere, yet often it is not, because school districts do not understand their obligations to provide children with hearing loss with the assistive technology and services they are eligible to receive. Parents also may not fully understand what services their child is entitled to under IDEA. A website such as this will give both parents and professionals the required information in an easy-to-understand format to ensure the child receives a free appropriate public education.”

The Special Education IDEA website will eventually be a subscription based resource but currently is being offered free of charge for a limited time only. Interested individuals will want to take advantage of this great opportunity to explore the website. To learn more about the special education website, please visit IDEA.letthemhear.org, or call Amy Brown at 650.617.2255 or toll-free at 877. HEAR HELP.

The Let Them Hear Foundation was founded in 2002 by Dr. Joseph Roberson and his wife, Julia. LTHF is the leader in giving individuals and families affected by hearing loss the objective information, expert advice, clinical and financial support, and legal access they need to choose the hearing alternative that is right for them.