WHAT YOU MISSED IN APRIL

Anna Gilmore Hall (pictured above), HLAA's executive director, presented a talk in which she stressed the need to increase the public's awareness of HLAA as the "go to" organization that is solely focused on addressing the issues of consumers. Her key goals, she said, are to:

* Position HLAA in a rapidly-changing world of social media and networking to drive brand awareness, friend raising, and fundraising.

* Build a robust network of HLAA chapters to provide peer mentoring.

* Lead the public and policymakers in taking action to take hearing more seriously as a health condition.

* Collaborate with other consumer groups, hearing health care professionals and manufacturers to bring the benefits of hearing technology to all those who need and want it.

* Enhance resources and tools to assist people with hearing loss who seek to improve their ability to communicate.

* Expand resources and tools to assist family members of people with hearing loss to better understand hearing loss and how to enhance communication within the entire family.

* Expand financial resources to support the HLAA mission and program activities.

She also pointed out that HLAA has launched a Consumer Technology Initiative to help people with hearing loss, and their families, to learn how assistive technologies can offer significant benefits. This initiative will:

* Serve as a national resource on assistive and emerging technologies for consumers and other stakeholders.

* Provide a consumer perspective to assistive and emerging technology companies, and health care companies offering products and services.

* Develop an HLAA Consumer Technology Advisory Board to include such stakeholders as: health care providers, technology manufacturers and service providers, hearing loss researchers, ethicists, National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (NIDCD), and the National Academies Institute of Medicine.

* Build an online assistive and emerging technologies community on HLAA's website.

Anna stressed that she "looks forward to talking with chapter leaders and members as together we become the organization envisioned by Rocky Stone where the stigma of hearing loss is eradicated and people with hearing loss and their families have all the resources they need to lead happy and successful lives."

ANOTHER NEW YORK CINEMA 

ADDS CLOSED CAPTIONING

As noted in the previous issue of News & Views, increasing numbers of New York movie theaters are offering closed-captioning. The most recent addition to the list, the venerable Lincoln Plaza Cinema, has begun offering closed captioning in response to a request from HLAA-NYC. The two largest of the cinema's six auditoriums are equipped to display captions on viewing devices available at the downstairs lobby.  

Most, but not all, English-language films are distributed with caption tracks. As Lincoln Plaza, since 1981 a showcase for independent and foreign-language films, does not yet indicate in its ads or online showtime listings the films for which captions are available, anyone wishing to see captioned movies at the theater should call the theater at 212-757-0359.

If you go, please thank the management, which also offers descriptive audio for people with visual impairments and which promises to expand these accessibility features to its other auditoriums.

Always ask for captioning devices when you go to the movies.  You can report your cinema experience via e-mail to Jerry Bergman ([email protected]), who heads HLAA-NYC's advocacy initiative.