U.S. Department of Labor Wants to Hear from You
The U.S. Department of Labor wants feedback from persons who are deaf or with hearing loss and their experience accessing employment services through American Job Centers. They are looking for people who have recently used or interacted with American Job Centers who would be willing to share their input in an hour-long virtual listening session.
To participate in an hour-long listening session hosted by the Department of Labor’s Office of Disability Employment Policy (ODEP) and the Civil Rights Center (CRC), participants should have:
- interacted with public or government-funded employment agencies, such as American Job Centers or One Stop,
- had these interactions within the past five years,
- used either a phone call, in-person meeting, or virtual meeting as part of this interaction.
Two meeting dates are set. Each meeting is 60 minutes long on Zoom platform and will include live/ASR captioning, CART captioning, and ASL.
Monday, September 12 at 3 p.m. ET
Wednesday, September 14 at Noon ET
To participate or to learn more, contact *Michael Petrick, Program Manager at Economic Systems at petrick@econsys.com.
The California Telephone Access Program (CTAP) is an invaluable service that many individuals are unaware of or don’t fully understand the free services they may be entitled to. CTAP products are geared to meet many needs including telephones, amplifiers, ring-signal, speech devices, headsets, and many accessories. So much help is available, you just need to ask!
Google Maps has recently begun including hearing loops in the accessibility information on its website. This has received little notice from the national media or hearing loss–related entities but, for the hard of hearing, this is important news. A national database of looped venues has been a goal of hearing loop advocates for years and it’s finally becoming a reality. This action, a joint undertaking of the Get in the Hearing Loop Committee (GITHL) of the Hearing Loss Association of America (HLAA) and Google Maps, is the latest example of the growing awareness and availability of hearing loops in public places.
Check out this feel-good story about how a simple act of providing a hearing aid to someone in need can dramatically change their lives. Thanks to Starkey Cares, they helped make a huge and positive impact for Branden Thibodeau, a Special Olympics softball player.
Hearing Loss Association of America (HLAA) has an annual fundraiser and raising awareness for hearing loss event called 
We had a wonderful chapter social gathering this spring to celebrate the CODA movie. Many of those who attended had not seen each other since pre-pandemic so it was a much-needed time together. After some pre-movie good food and appetizers, we all enjoyed a truly enlightening and magical movie. Although the movie does focus on the deaf community, we do hope it will also raise awareness for those with hearing loss.
