Richard Gleeson
Northern News Services

Yellowknife (May 15/02) - "Oh, never mind," was a phrase that went to the heart of Bev Speight when she was growing up in a small town in Saskatchewan.

Ruth Bennington: "Sometimes you have to remind people, gently, but you have to remind them." - Richard Gleeson/NNSL photo

Born hard of hearing, that was a common response she got after asking people to repeat what they said.

Her advice to people who come into contact with those who have hearing loss?

"Be patient and take the time to communicate with that person. That's the kindest thing you can do -- make sure the person is hearing what you are saying."

Speight is a member of the Yellowknife chapter of the Canadian Hard of Hearing Association, which is this month encouraging people to give a little more consideration to those with hearing loss.

Speight and those with hearing loss learn to compensate for it by developing a keen appreciation of the signals other than sound people use to communicate -- by lip-reading, observing facial expressions and body language.

"They say those who are hard of hearing only understand three out of ten words spoken -- the rest is put together with context," she said.

There are two distinct routes those who are hard of hearing can take.

They can try to conceal it, a route that leads to withdrawing from interacting with others, or they can make it known and encourage those who they interact with to account for it.

Speight, and Ruth Bennington, another member of the Yellowknife chapter of CHAA, have taken the second route.

Bennington's life has centred on interacting with others.

She has been a teacher for the last quarter century.

"It's something you always have to remind people of, gently, but you have to remind them," she said.

Bennington's hearing loss was not diagnosed until she turned 18.

None of the technological advances that help those with hearing loss today were available at the time.

It wasn't until she took in her son, who was born with hearing loss, for help that she turned to technology.

"I started wearing a hearing aid then, when he was four and I was in my early 30s," she said.

Like his mother, Chris spoke up about his hearing loss. He made his professors at university aware of it and made accommodations, such as using a note-taking service at lectures, to ensure he received the full benefit of his education.

Bennington said she found advocating for her children -- she also has a daughter who is hard of hearing -- made it easier for her to talk about her hearing loss.

The technological advances include smaller and more effective hearing aids, small transmitters and receivers similar to those used for simultaneous translation at meetings and real-time closed captioning.

The CHAA Yellowknife chapter received a demonstration of the last of those advances at their meeting Tuesday night.

NWT court reporter Lois Hewitt used her 225-words-a-minute stenographic skills to write what was said at the meeting as it was said.

"I'm a little nervous, this is new to me as well," Hewitt said.

The stenograph (a machine like a typewriter but with fewer keys) Hewitt uses in court was linked to a lap-top computer which was linked to a projector.

As she typed the words that were spoken, they appeared on a screen set up in the meeting room, allowing those in attendance to "hear" what is being said with their eyes.