Entries by Tina Lannin

Captioning – on a bus!

December 1, 2013 /0 Comments/in /by

Have you ever seen captioning on a bus? Our captioner Michelle tells us about a day in her life, captioning for everyone around her …. We all know that every day in the working life of a captioner is different, and can be a challenge, and then there are days like Tuesday 26th November! It began like any other day, with a booking for a regular client at a conference they were holding to discuss accessible tourism in Ireland, interesting! But then I was told we wouldn’t be needed till after lunch as the morning was being spent on an ‘accessible bus tour’ to some of the accessible sights of […]

Ginny Kanka: Me and my cochlear implants

November 10, 2013 /0 Comments/in /by

The vocal sounds I’ve heard have always come via hearing aids ever since the first one in 1949. The early hearing aids were amplifiers. Hearing people have explained that the vocal sound becomes more distorted the louder it gets. According to my hearing brain, the “distorted speech” sounds clear and normal to me. From the moment I had my first hearing aid (consisting of two Ever Ready portable A and B batteries in a bag and a huge black receiver with a silver spring-clip – was this casing made of Bakelite?), I loved it. From that point on, to be without a hearing aid was total anathema to me. By […]

Lip reading : Sir John Soane’s Museum

November 7, 2013 /0 Comments/in /by

Lip reading : Walks & talks for lip readers Sir John Soane’s Museum, 3 December 2013 & Programme 2014 We are pleased to attach our programme for next year and hope there will be something for everyone and even a few places you have not visited before! We have done our best to spread the walks for lip readers across a wide area of London and, as usual, the January and November walks will spend less time walking and more time inside an interesting museum or gallery in some way linked to the area of the walk. We are sure you will find the January walk of particular interest in this important […]

Understanding cochlear implants and hearing aids

November 1, 2013 /0 Comments/in /by

When you’re trying to find a solution to your hearing loss problems any device or procedure can seem like a glimmer of hope, especially once you’re introduced to the concept of cochlear implants. While both hearing aids and cochlear implants are designed to provide listening assistance to the hearing impaired they’re used for different purposes and their operational attributes are anything but the same Here are the main differences between cochlear implants and hearing aids: Primary Differences in Functionality First of all, hearing aids are devices that amplify sound waves in certain frequencies and then project those sounds towards the inner ear where they can be processed by the auditory […]

Lip reading talks: Canary Wharf

October 20, 2013 /0 Comments/in /by

Lip reading Talks: Canary Wharf and the Museum of London at Docklands, Sunday 17 November 2013 We round off another year of lip reading Walks&Talks with Diane Burstein offering a combined walk showing a little of Canary Wharf and then taking us inside the Museum of London’s Dockland site with lipspeaking support. We meet outside Canary Wharf tube station, by the clocks, and explore some of this magnificent modern development before heading over to the museum of Docklands. Before going inside we will admire some of the old sugar warehouses and discover why the area was once known as “Blood Alley”. In the museum itself Diane will give you an […]

A Play in the Life of a Theatre Captioner

October 3, 2013 /0 Comments/in /by

A captioner in the theatre? If you‘re one of the 10 million deaf, deafened or hard of hearing people in the UK who uses television subtitles, you may already know there’s now something similar in theatres. It’s called ‘captioning’ and it means you can enjoy a wide range of plays, musicals, comedies and family shows along with your hearing friends and family. STAGETEXT, the charity which introduced theatre captioning to the UK back in 2000, was established by three deaf people who were passionate about theatre but couldn’t follow it through sign language or sound enhancement and who wanted to access plays and musicals via English text. Last year STAGETEXT captioned […]

Entrepreneur of Excellence Award for Disability

September 27, 2013 /0 Comments/in /by

The National Diversity Awards 2013 was hosted by Brian Dowling (Big Bother) & Cerrie Burnell (Cbeebies) at The Queens Hotel, Leeds. Misha B (X Factor finalist) & the Nachda Sansaar Bhangra Band were there to entertain us. The National Diversity Awards celebrates all aspects of diversity within one ceremony – Age, Disability, Gender, Race/Religion/Faith and LGBT. The categories for the awards are: Positive Role Model, Community Organisation, Community Organisation – Multi Strand, Entrepreneurial of Excellence, Diverse Company and Lifetime Achiever! Tina Lannin was shortlisted out of 4,500 for the Entrepreneur of Excellence for Disability, and placed second. Dave Thompson MBE DL scooped first prize, he set up the Warrington Disability Partnership. […]

HMRC offers online access to deaf and hard of hearing customers

September 26, 2013 /0 Comments/in /by

You can now arrange an appointment with HMRC online. HMRC are running a pilot to introduce a new service for customers who are deaf, hard of hearing or have a speech impairment. The pilot will run from 2 September 2013 until 31 October 2013 and a new online form is available to request a face to face appointment. The online form must not be used by other customers to request face to face appointments. If you are not deaf, hard of hearing and don’t have a speech impairment, please call one of the HMRC helplines first. If the helpline is unable to answer your enquiry, the telephone operator can arrange […]

Advantages and disadvantages of wearing hearing aids 

September 10, 2013 /23 Comments/in /by

If you’ve recently been diagnosed with some form of hearing loss and are debating whether to buy a pair of hearing aids you’ll want to start by considering the advantages and disadvantages of wearing “assisted listening devices” to see if the pros outweigh the cons in your particular situation. While the benefits of wearing hearing aids are obvious to most people, there are also some significant disadvantages that come to mind, especially if you’ve not yet gotten accustomed to wearing hearing aids in public. To help make your decision easier we’ve compiled the main advantages and disadvantages of wearing hearing aids into a neatly organized list below for your reference: Advantages of […]

Barclays listen to deaf customers

August 30, 2013 /0 Comments/in /by

Deaf customers for Barclays? On Friday 7th June 2013, I was sitting inside Barclays Bank’s local branch staring at my mobile phone.  It was ringing.    The call was from a person at Barclaycard’s Fraud Detection team, who had insisted on speaking to me on my mobile phone.  I swiped ‘Answer’ then asked my son Richard, who was sitting next to me, “What on earth am I supposed to do now?” Barclays Bank’s Personal Banker, who was sitting opposite us, looked extremely embarrassed and shrugged.  I spoke into my mobile “Hello, I am Jill Hipson, I can’t hear you” and asked her what to do next.  She shrugged again.  I handed the phone […]