The mission of HLA-Central Massachusetts is to educate its members, their families and friends about the causes, nature and complications of hearing loss and what can be done to better cope with that loss.
Speaker: Caitlin Agreda, Au.D., CCC-A Audiologist UMass Memorial Medical Center
Topic: How to Choose a Cochlear Implant Vendor
Speaker: Ellen Perkins and Barbara Johnson
This program is designed for people who are curious about cochlear implants as a potential solution or just interested in learning what they are about. Caitlin will present an introduction to cochlear implants focusing on what a cochlear implant is, how it works, and what the process is. Ellen and Barbara will then reprise their popular presentation on how to navigate the vendor promotional fluff and understand the offerings of the 3 cochlear implant manufacturers.
Saturday, November 7th from 2:00 – 4:00 pm
. Topic: Are You Listening?
Speaker: Darleen Wilson
On Nov. 7th, the guest speaker will be Ms. Darleen Wilson. Ms. Wilson is a life-long musician and is actively dealing with the consequences of her own moderate-severe hearing loss. Convinced that there are better solutions for hearing technologies, Wilson undertook a Masters in Human Factors to expand her perspective on product design. She focuses her work on improving hearing products and services. Wilson serves on the Audiology Leadership Advisory Council for Mass. Eye and Ear (a teaching hospital for Harvard Medical School).
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All meetings will be held at the Northborough Library. There will be CART (computer aided real time captioning).
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Stay tuned for more details as we are in the process of contacting/confirming speakers for topics related to Cochlear Implant and Hearing Aid Technology, and Coping with Hearing Loss.
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If you have any suggestions for topics and speakers, please let us know.
When the coronavirus hit in early March, we had hopes that we could still hold the HLAA2020 Convention this June. Like you, we were watching the news and listening to guidelines from the CDC. It quickly became clear that cancelling this event that we all look forward to was a real possibility. The worsening situation in New Orleans and other parts of our country made it clear what we should do.
I want to thank our attendees, exhibitors, corporate partners, speakers, chapter and state leaders, and Board members for your patience and support while I was working with the New Orleans Marriott on a contingency. Cancelling this event is a disappointment for our community, but an absolute necessity to protect our health and help our country fight this pandemic.
Hearing loss is isolating enough and now we are further separated with the stay-at-home orders. HLAA is creating online resources and adding free captioned webinars and support sessions to help our members and constituents through this crisis.
We plan to deliver some of the featured content from the HLAA2020 Convention online in June. We are looking into technology solutions and talking with our sponsors about how best to do this.
We will Refund Your Registration Fee or Turn it into a Donation
Please let us know your choice by Friday, April 17
Some of you have generously offered to waive a refund of your paid registration fee as a way to support HLAA. While convention fees and sponsorships allow us to put on a fun and engaging event each year, they also fund staff time, software, and convention programming. The HLAA Convention provides funds we rely on and donations will help continue essential HLAA programs during this challenging time. We appreciate your donations.
If you wish to offer your paid registration as a donation, please email Amanda Watson at convention@hearingloss.org and let her know by Friday, April 17. We will send you an acknowledgment for your tax records. HLAA is a 501(c)(3) charitable organization.
If you would like a refund, please email Amanda Watson at convention@hearingloss.orgby Friday, April 17, 2020. You can also call Amanda on her direct line: 240.324.6073. If we don’t hear from you by April 17, we will consider this a donation.
Stay Tuned
If you are a sponsor, presenter, exhibitor, or award recipient, we will follow-up with specific information by phone or email.
Future HLAA Conventions 2021: San Diego, June 24-26, Town and Country 2022: Tampa, June 23-25, JW Marriott Tampa 2023: New Orleans, June 27-July 2, New Orleans Marriott (We were able to secure the same hotel and convention site even though HLAA2020 was cancelled.)
I appreciate the emails and calls I’ve received concerning the HLAA2020 Convention. Right now, please be safe and well and stay connected to HLAA. We want to be here for you in any way we can.
Speaker: Caitlin Agreda, Au.D., CCC-A Audiologist UMass Memorial Medical Center
Topic: How to Choose a Cochlear Implant Vendor
Speaker: Ellen Perkins and Barbara Johnson
This program is designed for people who are curious about cochlear implants as a potential solution or just interested in learning what they are about. Caitlin will present an introduction to cochlear implants focusing on what a cochlear implant is, how it works, and what the process is. Ellen and Barbara will then reprise their popular presentation on how to navigate the vendor promotional fluff and understand the offerings of the 3 cochlear implant manufacturers.
Saturday, September 12th from 2:00 – 4:00 pm.
.Topic: Convention Recap and Update on National Efforts
Speakers: Beth Wilson and Margaret Myatt
Beth and Margaret will be attending the HLAA convention and will provide highlights from the workshops and exhibit hall. They expect to be able to report the latest news on Over the Counter (OTC) hearing aids, Medicare coverage for hearing aids, rules and regulations related to captioning, and other national policy activity to benefit all of us with hearing loss.
Saturday, November 7th from 2:00 – 4:00 pm
. Topic: Are You Listening?
Speaker: Darleen Wilson
On Nov. 7th, the guest speaker will be Ms. Darleen Wilson. Ms. Wilson is a life-long musician and is actively dealing with the consequences of her own moderate-severe hearing loss. Convinced that there are better solutions for hearing technologies, Wilson undertook a Masters in Human Factors to expand her perspective on product design. She focuses her work on improving hearing products and services. Wilson serves on the Audiology Leadership Advisory Council for Mass. Eye and Ear (a teaching hospital for Harvard Medical School).
.
All meetings will be held at the Northborough Library. There will be CART (computer aided real time captioning).
.
Stay tuned for more details as we are in the process of contacting/confirming speakers for topics related to Cochlear Implant and Hearing Aid Technology, and Coping with Hearing Loss.
.
If you have any suggestions for topics and speakers, please let us know.
Saturday March 21, 2020 – 2:00 – 4:00 pm Topic: Beyond My Hearing Aid or Cochlear Implant
Speaker: Informal Rap Session with Participants
This “meeting” will be an informal rap session where we can learn from each other. We had a session last year called “Living With Hearing Loss” that provided an excellent exchange of ideas.
This year we will focus on “Beyond the Hearing Aid/CI.” For those of us who use hearing aids and/or cochlear implants, we find ourselves in situations where that technology is just not enough. Some people use technology (assistive devices, smart phone apps), clever non-technical strategies, and other techniques to supplement the hearing aid and/or CI.
We all participate in a range of activities and events outside the chapter meeting. This is an opportunity to share things that work and learn new tricks.
The session will be held at the Northborough Library from 2:00 – 4:00 pm. There will be CART (computer aided real time captioning).
As he recently dug into an unfamiliar drama, California native Adan Franco relied on the closed captioning at the bottom of his TV screen to help make sense of the characters and their foreign argot.
The show was “The Sopranos.”
“I had to pay close attention and internalize all this fast-paced information, especially in the first episodes,” so the transcription was critical, says the 24-year-old musician.
It isn’t just New Jersey accents and mob lingo that benefit from translation. Mr. Franco says he almost always keeps captioning turned on, no matter what’s playing. “It’s just my preferred way of watching things,” he says.
Subtitles have always been required reading for people watching foreign-language films. And for deaf and hard-of-hearing audiences, captioning is vital to any screen experience involving sound.
Because the primary purpose of closed captioning is accessibility—as required by federal law since the 1990s—it also includes sonic elements other than dialogue, such as song lyrics and sound descriptions like [ominous rustling] or [soothing music]. Subtitles are translations of dialogue into a different language.
In the sci-fi series ‘The Expanse,’ captions spell out the patois of people known as Belters.
PHOTO: AMAZON PRIME VIDEO
Some of the people most committed to captioning don’t need it at all. They are viewers who hear just fine but prefer to read along with everything they watch, including TV shows and movies in their own language, as a hack to better understand what is happening on screen.
It is a subculture of sub-text that veterans of the captioning industry say is growing. Driving the habit: the multitasking ways of younger viewers, and the broader influence of phones and other personal screens that overflow with captioned imagery, from internet memes to video clips that spread on social media.
“It’s a generational change,” says Larry Goldberg, who helped write federal legislation mandating closed-captioning in digital media and is the current head of accessibility at Verizon Media. Most producers and distributors no longer have to be prodded to include captioning, largely because of demand from viewers for whom it is entirely optional, he says. “It’s gone mainstream, and when I started in this business, I would never have imagined this,” he says.
Emily Boudrot, a student at Ball State University in Indiana, got into the caption habit in high school because it was frustrating to rewind when she missed things. Her mother hates it when she turns on the captions at home, but she has converted others to the written word. “Most of my friends use them,” she says. “And if they didn’t before, they do now after spending time with me.”
Actors who mumble, whisper or talk over each other? Programs with wildly fluctuating sound levels? Knotty dialect from the old-time British gangsters of “Peaky Blinders”? The lyrics to a song underscoring a dramatic scene? Captioning helps you capture it all, adherents say.
Some English speakers need help with the knotty dialect from the old-time British gangsters of ‘Peaky Blinders.’
PHOTO: NETFLIX
Off-screen, captions preserve domestic tranquility when dealing with a sleeping or noisy family member nearby. And they help viewers pick up on crucial dialogue even while chowing down on crunchy snacks.
“I felt like the captions and the audio were competing, and my brain didn’t know which one to follow,” she says.
Three years later, the romance is over, but Ms. Peters is committed to captioning. It not only helps her make out the accents of denizens of an asteroid belt in “The Expanse” (which she also stuck with), the university lecturer and sci-fi filmmaker says it brings out the nuances in her viewing across the board. “It’s just a part of watching scripted entertainment,” says Ms. Peters, who has been known to enable captioning on the TV sets of family members she visits.
Some jokes in “Frasier” just seem funnier, some “Star Trek” lines more relevant, when reinforced in writing on screen, says Hannah Broder of Baltimore. She was introduced to closed captions in college through a friend who was hard of hearing. Now, “it just helps me take in everything I watch, even if it’s an episode of ‘The Office’ or ‘Parks and Recreation,’ ” says the 22-year-old social-media manager.
For many viewers who grew up watching subtitled Japanese anime series and scanning captioned clips on devices with the sound off, reading something on Netflix comes naturally.
“You’re watching a show but also doing two other things at the same time,” says Steve Howze, a 33-year-old sketch-comedy writer living in New York. He counts himself as a captions-on guy—except with comedies, he says, because the text often outpaces and spoils the punch lines.
More people are viewing TV and movies through the lens of social media, where screenshots and GIFs superimposed with text are ubiquitous. “When I watch things with the captions, I can just take a picture of the screen and have an instant meme,” says Nick Gilyard Spence.
Dominic Spence, left, and Nick Gilyard Spence bonded years ago over captioning.
PHOTO: JULIA ZAHAROVA
For the 28-year-old Miami publicist, text on a TV screen also announced true love. Mr. Spence and a former high-school acquaintance discovered they both loved watching the 2000s sitcom “Girlfriends”—and with captioning turned on. “I thought, ‘We are soul mates,’ but I didn’t say that out loud because it was only our second date.”
Since then, the couple has used captioning to process the dense soliloquies of “Scandal,” the murmured remarks in “The Real Housewives of Atlanta” and the chaotic exchanges in the 2011 movie “Contagion.” They even incorporated the technology into their 2017 wedding ceremony. “I vow to love you without ceasing,” Nick said to his now-husband Dominic Spence, “and turn on the closed captions when we watch our favorite movies.”
Paid admission includes Accessible Seating at the 1-hour performance, attendance at the planned Open-Forum Question & Answer session with the Cast along with Meet & Greet and Book Signing opportunities.
– A.S.L. and C.A.R.T. provided –
ALL SEATS: $25.00
No Limits, a nationwide nonprofit organization with over 23 years of having empowered deaf children and families to dream big for their futures, presents Silent NO MORE on one night only at Arlington’s Showplace of Entertainment.
Directed by Dr. Michelle Christie (No Limits Founder and Executive Director,) this original live theatrical performance is an intimate storytelling event comprised of witty, inspiring and raw stories of growing up with hearing loss. It highlights both the struggles and the success of living in the modern world with hearing loss. The cast of Silent NO MORE features five-time American Comedy Award nominee Kathy Buckley, known for the award winning PBS special No Labels, No Limits. Acclaimed author Rebecca Alexander (Not Fade Away), and David Hawkins, John Autry, Henry Greenfield, Johnny Palmer and Michelle Tang.
All tickets bought are for GENERAL ADMISSION seating.
Doors Will Open for Seating at… 6:45PM This event will begin promptly at… 7:30PM
If you need reasonable accommodations, such as wheelchair accessible seating….
…please call our Box Office: 781.646.4849 Wheelchair Accessible seating is also Available Online
CART (Computer Aided Real Time captioning which is projected onto a large screen so that participants can "hear" what is being said) is available at all meetings.
Blogroll
Blog-The Better Hearing Consumer
The Better Hearing Consumer discusses our holy grail – living successfully with hearing loss by aiming for good communication in every area of our lives.
Living With Hearing Loss
A blog for people living with hearing loss by Shari Eberts. She has served on the HLAA board since 2015 and is the former Board Chair of Hearing Health Foundation (2012-2015).
ALDA-Association of Late-Deafened Adults-Boston-Facebook
ALDA-an inclusive organization that provides information, support, and social enrichment for all those with hearing loss. Some of us are late-deafened, others are hard of hearing, and others may be deaf.
Boston Guild for the Hard of Hearing
Boston Guild for the Hard of Hearing was founded in 1916 and was originally called the Speechreader’s Guild. The vision of the Guild at that time was to establish a haven where the problems associated with hearing loss would be understood and addressed.
Center For Living and Working – Deaf and Hard of Hearing – Central MA
CLW’s Deaf and Hard of Hearing Independent Living Services (DHILS) include a variety of services for Deaf and Hard of Hearing consumers. We accept referrals from other agencies or individuals may self-refer by visiting or calling our offices
Online "Modern Guide to Hearing Loss"
A Modern Guide to Hearing Loss for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing published by Massachusetts Commission for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing (PDF version)
