As my friend says, "My mind wanders alot...."

And my mind did wander alot this week as well........

Ever since the first time I heard the crosswalk signal sound for the visually impaired, I have been thinking.... and thought, "Wow!!" The visually impaired have it made, really!! Think about it, they have braille on the dollar bills, on the ATMs numerical keyboard, elevator buttons, etc., they even have different coin sizes, there is that crosswalk signal, audio books, etc., etc.... the list can go on. There is even a "zoom" programs for computers, which is a tool to magnify, capture, paint and write on screen. There is even a speech recognition program, etc, etc......

Folks in wheelchairs..... they have wheelchair accessible washrooms, doorways, low curbs, automatic doorbutton, there are even wheelchair accessible homes, Ability vans, etc... oh the list can go on....

I am thinking, what does the deaf have? Don't think, "Oh she is feeling sorry for herself", which I am not. I am just stating some facts. The list is pretty short compared to the ones I gave above. The population of Greater Moncton, my hometown, is 128,000 and we only have one full time interpreter, with just a few back-ups, and we have about 60 deaf people in our community.... only just one community interpreter. We don't pay for the interpreter, which is great. What else??..... we do have special alarm clocks, close captioned TV, flashing lights, Video Phone, TTY, etc., but these are used for our homes. We are lucky to have them, expensive products they are, yes, and we pay from our own pockets.....

You are probably thinking... What is Cheryl trying to say?

Compare the three paragraphs I wrote.... notice the first two paragraphs are about "things" out in town, around town, in buildings, workplace, out in public, etc.... and those things are paid by the town/city, companies, government, etc.... not a penny comes out of the visually impaired's pockets... and the person in the wheelchair's pockets as well.....

No problem to have a wheelchair accessible washroom in a workplace, and no problem to get a Zoom program for a couple of computers at work. In the past, I have asked for one simple thing at work and it was declined.... a pager or something I can have with me to warn me the fire alarm is going off. Instead I was assigned a fire buddy, for 8 years now. I don't feel comfortable with this at all, as we all work different shifts, different lunch hours, etc...

One time, the fire alarm went off and my TM was my buddy, she saw me as we "looked" at each other, so I assumed all was okay there, so I went outside with everybody. Then my TM comes to me nearly having a heart attack saying to me "where were you???" Gee......

At one of my other jobs approximately 18 years ago , I was up on the 4th floor, and the fire alarm went off and I didn't hear this one. Nobody came to get me and I was the second lone person on that floor. Luckily a person heard me working away on the computer and she came to get me..... Guess what, it was a REAL fire alarm, not a drill. I was none too pleased. Since then, I have always been nervous about fire alarms.

With my new CI, I have not heard the actual fire alarm yet, but I am sure I will hear it soon. Likely I will have a heart attack and jump off the chair!! :)) We'll see and I'll let you know when I do hear it :)

The deaf ask for a small measly thing and most of the time, they say it can't be done, where the town/city, buildings, workplaces goes to "bat" for folks with other disabilities. There might be a few handful of deaf that got lucky at their workplace, mostly they are government jobs. Um, something is wrong with this picture.....