September 23 Chapter Meeting – A Bit of Everything and a Farewell

Well we had a bit of everything for this full house chapter meeting. Starting with WOW awards given to Mitzi and Jenna for their outstanding contributions at the tech expo manning the booth and connecting with those who visited. Way to go! This continued with an announcement of team focus groups, discussion regarding FCC removing captions from the caption telephony system shared from Liz, LAX advisory note from Ken, HAT technologies presentation from Katie Wright and last but not least, a touching farewell to Lisa.

(Here’s the chapter meeting transcript for your review)

Chapter President, Heather Lehr, discussed key focus areas we want to think about toward future chapter growth, outreach and advocating for ourselves and the hearing loss community. Numerous groups were presented (see the meeting transcript for the names!) that will consist of chapter members. A sign-up sheet was passed around and will be reviewed further by the Steering Committee to plan next steps. If you were unable to attend the meeting or would like to learn more, please join us for our October 28 meeting or you can always reach us via our Contact Us Form.

A discussion was started by Liz regarding the FCC plans to make caption phones more affordable by pushing forward with auto voice recognition technologies. This isn’t necessarily opposed by HLAA, but it needs to be ready, reliable and provide the quality captioning that is required for successful communication. FCC will publish their recommendations in October so continue to monitor this on hearingloss.org or our Chapter’s website RSS feeds which you’ll find on the right side of the home page. Let’s make sure to do the postcards!

We also discussed concerns and challenges faced at airports, namely LAX. It was reminded that there are monthly meetings of the LAX Advisory board which includes Larwence Rowland who presented to the chapter last fall. The December 2016 edition of the Hearing Loss California magazine has more information.

Katie Wright, President of the Long Beach Chapter, was kind enough to do her presentation “When Hearing Aids Are Not Enough” regarding Hearing Assistive Technologies (HAT) and key points to remember about hearing aids and just what they can and can’t do for us. An important part of the discussion was about various hearing situations and how they impact HA users. Key factors to consider includes 1) background noise 2) reverberation and 3) distance. At the end of her presentation and during the second half session, Katie had a presentation table with technologies to share with chapter members. Time was running short with we’ll need Katie to come back!

After a break, we spent the remaining time to recognize all the invaluable contributions Lisa Yuan has given to the chapter. Starting from struggling to come to terms with her hearing loss when first joining the chapter all the way to becoming an integral part of the growth and success of the chapter…and President! It’s worked both ways as the chapter helped Lisa to gain the confidence to pursue an enormous opportunity in DC. She will be missed and it was certainly prevalent as numerous chapter members spoke to all about just what Lisa meant to them. We wish Lisa well toward her new chapter in her life and at the same time, she will always be instilled in the history and memories of the chapter and its members!