Lipreading Mom

Recently, I blogged about working with my school district’s Inclusion and Diversity Committee and shared my own inclusion story. Every day at my job is an opportunity to advocate for the needs of my students with special needs. This includes advocating for proper accommodations in the classroom so that they can have an equitable, inclusive education. I have also become more vocal about requesting necessary things to accommodate my hearing loss at work. Making sure that an FM (frequency modulated) assistive listening device is present at my staff meetings and trainings was requested when I began teaching, and administrators have readily complied.

But sometimes an assistive listening device is not enough. With the severity of my sensorineural hearing loss, I do not hear every sound clearly even with my hearing aids or an FM system. This necessitates other accommodations.

Training Videos and Podcasts: An Opportunity for Inclusion and Equity

Recently, I attended an equity and inclusion job training. As part of the training, videos were presented to share what these two concepts are. By definition, equity is “justice according to natural law or right; specifically : freedom from bias or favoritism.” Inclusion is defined as “the act of including : the state of being included.”

One of the ways that equity and inclusion benefit my professional work is when I request a reasonable accommodation for meetings and training, that need is readily met. I reached out to one of the training presenters and expressed my need for closed captions and/or written transcripts to be included with all videos and podcasts. This is in compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act.

One of the visuals shown in the training looked similar to this visual:

I will keep you updated on progress made.