Comments by Martyn Webster

Martyn Webster
Member - 3 posts

I was lucky enough to work with a profoundly deaf person for a number of years. She was a copy typist allocated to a specic department. Her work was exemplorary, and her concentration and ability to solve problems, expecially with the software she used, was extraordinary. There was absolutely nothing lacking in her abilities. She liked to be involved in all aspects of office life, and...as long as you looked in her general direction when talking to her, or to a group which included her, she was able to lip read with rekmarkable accuracy....even the jokes had her smiling in response. Her profound deafness had the unfortunate effect of making her speech very shasrp, loud and gutteral, which could be intimidading to someone until they got used to listening, but aparet from that there was no real problem. There were of course a number of practical issues which needed to be addressed. Fire alarm systems in her immediate working environment needed to be upgraded to provide visual indication (we fitted strobe beacons for her, and also in the ladies toilets!) Inevitably, the annual interview/review tended to take rather longer. To her particular credit, this wonderful lady refused to have an "interpreter" present during these chats, and also went some way towards teaching me to "sign". She brought up a happy family, held down a busy job, and filled our working lives with laughter and made us all think seriously about who the "lucky one" really was.