 So our presentation today is about creating hearing and age friendly communities. As I mentioned earlier, our presenter has laryngitis and she's not able to give this presentation today. But I'm going to give most of the presentation that she was scheduled to give minus her own personal story. So before we get going here, I have a couple of questions that I'd like to ask everybody. And we'd like you to raise your hand in the emoticon that has the smiley face. So how many of you have a telecoil in your hearing instrument? How many of you don't have a telecoil? So if you don't have a telecoil raise your hand. Okay. Is there anybody here who doesn't know what a telecoil is? We'd like you to raise your hand to that. Okay. So we have an idea that the most most of the people in this meeting today already have telecoils. If by some chance you don't have one, you don't know what it is. That is the golden gift for you to be able to understand in public venues. If you don't have a telecoil in your hearing device, you're not going to be able to easily wirelessly connect to assistive listening systems that are mandated by civil rights, disability civil rights laws. Something that all of us complain about we don't understand it. It's why don't audiologist hearing healthcare providers tell more people about telecoils. As it turns out for the Diablo Valley chapter. When we were meeting in person. And people were new to our meetings. We never ever had a person come to a meeting who already knew what a telecoil was. So then we would explain what it is, then they would go back to their audiologist and ask them to ask activated if possible. Well I wanted all of you to know that this year. Sherry Parazole, Jennifer Ralph, Sue Prichard and I, all represented HLA a at the American Academy of Audiology conference 2023 in Seattle. We had a huge banner, which you can see that's on the orange part behind where we're standing. The picture on the left, Sue was actually in that picture, but whoever took it cropped off part of her face. And I didn't want to exclude her. So I put her to the right in another image so everybody could see that she was there with us. I'm hoping that by adding, we need Bluetooth and telecoils because obviously hearing health care providers, somehow it's just going right over their head that we need that for most of them. So we really wanted to make the point of this, all of the documentation and literature that you see on the table there was directed specifically to audiologists about assistive listening systems, and also about using telecoils. We made buttons for the event that we handed out, and the button says, far from obsolete we still need telecoils, because we're hearing people are saying they're going they are, oh you don't need a telecoil, we do need a telecoil. So I just wanted to let everybody know that we're doing our part to get the word out and we did it in the biggest way possible we've ever done it before this year. I'd like to introduce you to Dave Myers, and he's considered to be the father of the American hearing loop movement, and he first experienced a hearing loop in I own a chapel in Scotland. And I've heard him tell this story many times, Dave sits on the get in the hearing loop committee with us and his family fund funds most of the program for us for getting the hearing loop. And his wife or in this old stone chapel which is I own a chapel and his wife nudged him right and said hey Dave, look at that sign over there with an ear with a slash through it. I wonder if that could help you. Dave wasn't really familiar with that you know he'd never really seen it. He fiddled around with his hearing aid. And as he says right here. He saw a clear human voice. Instead of a verbal fog. I was on the verge of tears after Dave came home from that particular trip. He started the get in the hearing loop movement in the United States in Michigan where he lives. Where should we have communication access everywhere. What communication access means. It means that everybody gets the message. Now, for most of us who happen to be in this meeting, we can still understand with a hearing loop. Some of us also need captions, but this particular presentation is really only about advocating for hearing loops. So we have an example of a diagram that we have which is on some large posters that we use in our outreach events. And you can probably see that same image on the behind me because I have the poster stuck up on my on my bookshelf. So you need to kind of give people an idea about what it's like to use a hearing loop. So you need an amplifier, a microphone, if you're looking at the image all the way to the left. And a person either needs an instrument, meaning a hearing aid or cochlear implant with a telecoil built built in. And the person you can see that one of the people has a hearing aid, one person has a cochlear implant. One person who has on a headset. So assistive listening systems in public places are required to be accessible for all of us. But as all of you know, headphones don't work very well with hearing aids. So that's why a telecoil is wonderful we just walk in and press a button and you're done. So that you might really want to have assistive listening systems where we currently don't have might be pharmacies, banks, or doctors offices. We use mechanics bank for the Diablo Valley chapter. And we prior to using mechanics bank we use Bank of America. And when we change banks. We use the branch in Danville and also in downtown Walnut Creek. I went to the both branch offices and asked them to install a hearing loop, and they have a hearing loop in both of those locations. Another place it's really important for us is transportation. So we would like to be able to understand the announcements. Now, I want to tell everybody I've traveled recently twice. I want to let you know that TSA on their website has a card that you can print and you can write on the card that you have a hearing loss. So you can flash it give it to the person at TSA. You can also notify TSA that you need help through the airport. And so when you check in and when you get there, theoretically, they're supposed to be somebody to help you. So, I've never even though I've done that, I either am not doing it enough time ahead, or something happens and it's never worked for me, but something wonderful that happened was I use Southwest on my two recent flights. And on there they have, if you need special assistance. And one of the options was deaf and hard of hearing. And I checked that. And so on my ticket, everything that came up with my boarding pass said that I was deaf. So I got to pre-board with anybody who needed assistance, which could have been a family with small kids, somebody who had mobility issues. And that's really important to us because we can't understand the announcements when you're on the airplane. So if you can't understand what they're saying, when there's the full line of people, it makes it really difficult for us. So I'm really encouraging all of you to not feel guilty about doing that. And you can also use hearing loops at home. So there's a portable hearing loop. Oh, gosh, you know, I've been running around like crazy, making this presentation work well today. And I think you can see it in my thumbnail. This is an example of a portable hearing loop. You can see it's maybe, let's see. Okay, it's only six inches wide. And the back of it, you can connect it to your television. You could use one in your dining room. Then you connect the loop wire right here. And if you had family dinners, as long as you passed around a microphone, you could put your hearing aid and telecoil and be able to hear the advantage of connecting your TV versus using some of the accessory items. Is if you have people who come over to your home, who want to watch television with you or you want to watch television together. And they also have hearing loss. Most of the TV accessories with the hearing instruments only allow one person to connect to them. But if you had a hearing loop in your living room, as many people could connect to that as had telecoils or you might even have a receiver and you could give somebody a receiver and a headphone. Mary Parazoli and I have both actively been advocating for hearing loops and assistive technology in both of our communities. We met at an HLAA convention, I think in around 2011-2012. And she began working in her area and I was working in my area. And what both of us found was that there really wasn't a lot of organized materials for us to become educated advocates. So we both were simultaneously connecting, collecting info information so that we could learn what we needed to know to be respected by people when we went out to advocate. In 2018, she became the chair of the get in the hearing loop committee and asked me to join the committee. And at that time I was somewhat resistant because I wasn't just in favor of hearing loops. I'm an advocate for communication access. So communication access could be hearing loops. Could be captions. Could be an ASR speech to text app on an iPad. But she's very convincing and she twisted my arm. And so we set out at that time to create the tools for everybody else to be able to become expert advocates. And this was a complete labor of love on our part. And if either one of us would have had any idea how much trouble it was to do this and how long it would take, we probably would have given up before we started. So it's kind of like a children's it was embarking on a children's something or other that you didn't know what it would take. And what we have created, and the committee as well so all of us is two guides. One is a get in the hearing loop at this advocacy guide. And the other one is a hearing loop toolkit handbook. We've currently had a couple of printings of these a handful of them went to the international organization that's comparable to HLA a but in Europe and wasn't went to Budapest. And a couple of them went someplace else. We're hoping to be able to have them in print for the convention, at least some of them. They are available on the HLA website. You can download them their PDF documents you can scroll through them. If anybody has any problems with them. Please let me know. So if you're thinking about how do you get started advocating for better communication access via hearing loops in your, in your area. And the first thing that you need to do is need become knowledgeable about the issues. knowledgeable about the technology. What's required under the law. Why is it important to install hearing loops that meet the international IEC standard. All of those things. And those things are all contained in both the advocacy guide and the handbook. The advocacy guide, excuse me the handbook was compiled first, and after we compiled the handbook we realized, oh, so these are the tools that one needs to use to have under their belt, when they go out to advocate. And then a dawned on us, oh gosh you know it could probably be really helpful to have a guide about how to advocate. And so then the advocacy guide was created. And that one of the first steps after you gather your group of people together, and hopefully, you can find somebody else that's more than just you. In our chapter pretty much, I've been a stall worth advocate and sometimes couple of other people come in for a little while and work on a little project. It would be much more wonderful for those of us in Contra Costa County. We have five people and we could really create a plan here. So, after you assemble your group of people then what you're looking to do is build the coalitions and partnerships with others. So, you could we could do the Chamber of Commerce. We would go out and approach the Chamber of Commerce and the Chamber of Commerce would then be on board about realizing that the businesses in our community aren't providing communication access for us. We could contact the agency on aging in Contra Costa County. So, you get the idea. Once you do this then you begin advocating for the needed accessibility. After you get a few things done, then you always have to monitor your success. So those of you who are here know that starting in 20, I think it was 2010. I'm an avid reader. And so I advocated for the libraries of Walnut Creek in Contra Costa County to get hearing loops. And over several years, all of them do have hearing loops at least at the information counter and Walnut Creek, the main meeting room also has a hearing loop. But what happens is the microphones either aren't permanently installed a fix to the counter, or they have a change in staff. So we have to be on them to keep monitoring that they're still working. I know in downtown Walnut Creek right now they've installed a whole new system that has microphones in the glass partition, but they didn't connect the hearing loop to the microphone for the glass partition. So there's a whole project here connecting with them to see what we can do about that. So when you go to talk to people, you really need to know that you need to know your audience. Who might you want to approach the first person you talk to, if you called city council or something like that, maybe the city clerk. Well, the city clerk certainly is not a decision maker. So what you're looking for as you're reaching out is you're trying to find the highest level person you possibly can, who can make decisions. Another place you could start us with an ADA coordinator. The Diablo Valley chapter has compiled a list of ADA coordinators in our county was then expanded to all of California was originally funded by a grant from the Lafayette Community Foundation, and it's posted on our website. And the driving force behind this list was that the chapter members from the Diablo Valley chapter kept saying, Oh, well, so great, how do we find the ADA coordinators. So we made it easy for everybody to find them and government agencies. So everyone may be hearing a lot of things about DEI disability. Oh, I can't ever remember the E and inclusion and we are part of that, although many agencies are focusing more on equity disability equity and inclusion. So they're directing more attention on inclusion, but not for people with disabilities. So that's something that we really need to speak up about. You need to know what's the language of the ADA so you use the right language. So I've met a lot of people who thought that the ADA dictated that we have hearing loops and that's not true. So we've on this slide we have some of the common questions that are required that you can start looking at their website for city government, for example, and see if they have an ADA accommodation website and how to contact the ADA coordinator there and some of the things that you would be looking at is. Your city providing auxiliary aids and services. And that would be for everything city council meetings, your parks and recreation department. They're required to have a notice of grievance procedure. Is there an ADA coordinator is a contacts persons email being provided. I'm always amazed by how many websites I go to how many people I connect with, and there's no way other than the telephone to connect to that person. And all of us really know the telephone generally is not a good thing for most of us anymore. I thought you would then be asking them as part of the educational process when you're building community and collaboration is, oh, can you please add an email address that we can contact you at, because I don't understand very well on the telephone. So the ADA mandates that one of three assistive listening systems is required to be provided anywhere that there's a PA that's used. The systems are a hearing loop and FM system and an infrared and hearing loops are the people's choice. And the reason is because they're so simple and easy to use you just turn on the telequill program and your instrument. You don't have to borrow equipment. You don't have to give anybody your driver's license, you don't have to remember to return the equipment, not only return the equipment, but make sure you get your driver's license back. It also doesn't require us to identify that we have hearing loss. It may or may not be important to you at this point in my life. I just want to be able to hear, but a lot of people don't want to be identified as somebody with hearing loss. We've been fortunate enough to have Juliet Sturkin to give a presentation to our chapter but it's been a long time. She's a fabulous advocate. She's an HLAA hearing loop advocate. She's an audiologist who's retired. She also sits on the HLA get in the hearing loop committee and we meet once a month via zoom. And when Juliet was an audiologist and she actually found out about hearing loops. She became impassioned about ensuring that her patients had telequills in their devices, and then she went out to the community to advocate for hearing loops and she has over. I think it's over 500 hearing loops that are installed in churches in her area. And it says, people who can't hear will stop going to lectures to school and to church. We can't let that happen. This logo, and what you're seeing the logo means the signage that's at the top there which is the ear with a slash in it, and the T indicates a hearing loop. This logo needs to be as pervasive as the universal handicap logo and restroom logos. And the thinking of restroom signs really puts it into perspective right. This is a postcard that we have that was originally handed out at the international meeting in Budapest. We put everything together on a small postcard so everybody would be easy for everybody to find everything, seeing that we only took a limited number of handbooks. I can send this to all of you. We'll be giving them out at the convention. And we're also looking to find more success stories for people so that we can start including more of them. In the advocacy guide, at the last, in the last maybe third of the advocacy guide, we have success stories from all around the country about getting hearing loops installed in places like MoMA in New York, taxicabs in New York, Lincoln Center, things like that, churches. And last year, I'm very proud to say that they get in the hearing loop approach to Google and ask them if they would include hearing loops on Google Maps. And after several months of talking back and forth with them, they agreed. We've been seating them initial hearing loop locations, and we've given them over 5,000. If you know of a hearing loop location, oh, it's easy for you, all you have to do is go to Google Maps to see. So if you look on the left here as a sample of what it would look like on your phone, and you go to about, which you see up there in blue and when you click on about, and you scroll down. There's a section that says accessibility. So you can see here the Fox City Performing Arts Center, which happens to be where Juliet lives, has an assistive hearing loop. Now we just call them hearing loops and they decided to call them assistive hearing loops. So don't get thrown by that. It's the same thing. If you go to someplace, or you know of someplace and you want to see if it's on Google Maps, and you go and look and you don't see that you can let us know you could go advocate to them. You can also contact hearing loop locations to hearing loss or hearing loop locations and a form comes up for you to be able to fill in about that location. I'm proud of this. It was really a big deal to get this done. We can't tell everybody enough how important it is that we become accustomed to seeing the symbol on the left. That symbol on the left without the T is the official mandated international access for hearing loss. This is from the ADA. Now it has been modified with a T when it's a hearing loop, but we should be seeing this just as often as we see the mobility symbol. And so assistive listening systems are the real chair ramps for people with hearing loss. Here's an example of how somebody may celebrate success. This is for Seattle rep. And this part of this presentation that I'm giving today was Cherries without her story, but we don't have anything that we could have used as an example of this we in our area never did anything to celebrate success. So Seattle rep had a huge unveiling that they announced to the community that they were invited to the launch that a performance on April 24, 2016, and they distributed this. This is a two sided card throughout the community. As you can see, it's a great way to get publicity in the in out into the public. Now I'm sure you all know that advocating for accessibility for all of us. Isn't an easy thing to do. And I can guarantee that you're going to run into roadblocks. So what might those roadblocks to be. So the first one is that they're not specifically required by law. They could they could install an FM and they could could install an infrared. Now, if you went to a venue and an FM or an infrared worked. That would be providing communication access. And if they worked, it might not be a place where you'd want to direct a lot of attention. Unfortunately, most of the time when you go to venues that have FM or infrareds, they don't work. And then you're in a whole different place. So the venue has already decided that they acknowledge that they need to have a system listening technology. They have some but it doesn't work so you can talk to them and say hey listen, what you have doesn't work. I'd like you to install a hearing loop. You're required to have a system that works. In the large room in the Walnut Creek library they originally had an FM system. And there were really quite a few of us in the hearing loss community who approached them to change the system to hearing loop. So I approached them as HLA a Diablo Valley chapter. There's another group that meets there and Jill McFadden is here and she just left for a minute. I think it's called I always get the name on black Hawk or black something movies, and they show international films in there. And none of the people who were part of our chapter or even some of the people with hearing loss or didn't belong to our chapter could understand through the FM system. So they were hearing it from multiple different angles, and they changed the system. Another roadblock you might have is the venue you're talking about really doesn't care. They don't care if they provide access to people with hearing loss. So, Jill, I asked a question a moment ago and you just gotten up. What's the name of that group of people who meet at the Walnut Creek library that show foreign films and things black something. Can you remember what the name of that is mountain shadow. Oh, there we go. Thank you. Thank you. So the name of the group so people from mountain shadows who belong, and I think you pay a nominal fee to belong to that. They were complaining as well so it was a collaboration from all of us. Thanks so much Jill. Okay, so the venues not interested. I mean, it's hard to imagine sometimes when you're a really caring person that some people just don't care. And or they're taking the option that, oh, they're not going to get sued, because most people don't have enough energy to sue somebody. So if they don't get sued they don't have to do anything. Another obstacle that you might run into is many audio visual companies recommend FM system specifically over into red. I'm familiar with that. And it costs less costs less but people don't use it and it doesn't work as well. So there is a situation where somebody may choose to install an infrared system. And that's because the infrared system is line of sight. And if you had a scenario that required. Financiality, somebody may do an infrared system instead. Another option another roadblock you might have is somebody said we don't have any money. But just because people say they don't have any money doesn't mean that they really do. There are grants around there are options about things that they're not really looking at. So they easily tell somebody we don't have any money not thinking of what it would really cost them if they had a lawsuit instead. They can frequently tell somebody, oh, we don't have any money and thinking that you'll go away. So if you ran into any of these options you have to figure out ways to work around these roadblocks so that you can get a seat at the table and that it's your herd. I have to say that I really exercised my speaking up and learning how to advocate muscle because of running into roadblocks. And in general in my life, it's really made me a much, much, much better communicator. And I hope if and when you run into roadblocks that you just don't give up. And if you need somebody to help lift you up for a day, just give me a buzz. You can email me because I now have to cochlear implants. I can actually talk on the telephone if you would choose to do that. Advocacy creates change. So the first thing that we need to do for all of us is we need to get a seat at the table. So, you know, it's very easy to say that, Jay, we have an invisible condition and nobody pays any attention to us. And, you know, we all have our litany of things that we can say about why more attention isn't paid to us. But when you get a seat at the table, they have to pay attention to you. So I just like you to really think about how important that is to get the seat at the table so you can continue to speak about what's important to you, how you can participate in society, and what the options are. Something else that's very, very important is sharing your story. So at the beginning of this presentation, I started sharing my story about how Sherry Parazoli and I met each other. What some of the problems we ran into were what we wanted for everybody else who came behind us. We didn't want anybody else to have to work as hard as we did. We wanted to provide the tools for you to be able to just educate yourself from the tools that are provided rather than having to get them. And we all need to request hearing access everywhere. Now, I know that there are times when, for myself included, that the situation is one that you really don't want to ask for in that situation. And I had one during the pandemic. My husband's younger brother passed away unexpectedly. And we went back east to his memorial service. We were all so upset about the fact that he passed away. Prior to going to the event, I just really did not want to raise any waves. I didn't want anything to be any more difficult for anybody, even if that meant I suffered. So I was being self-sacrificing. And all of us do that sometime. And so I didn't contact the church, didn't do anything and thought, well, whatever this is, you know, I'm going to get through this, life goes on. And boy did I have a wonderful surprise. I walked up to the church, the doors that were open, and there was a hearing loop sign. So I hadn't had an opportunity to use my new cochlear implants with a hearing loop during the pandemic. And generally I'm hearing so well that in one-to-one conversations everywhere, I don't need anything else to help me. So this was my forced foray into a larger expanded world. And I have to tell you, as soon as the minister started talking, the reverberation in the church was horrible. And I didn't want to get out my telephone because I don't want people to think that, oh gosh, what she's playing with, you know, we're sitting in the family row to playing with her phone, you know, during this important time. And even though I can press a button on my processor, it's a rocker that changes programs and volume. And I don't think it's very easy to use. But at least I knew where it was. And I thought, okay, calm yourself, center yourself. And thought, okay, it's a long press. And lo and behold, I did the long press, and I could hear as clear as a bell. Now I would not have been able to understand anything in that situation without that. Recently, last week, I gave a presentation to the Rossmore fund, and I was contacted by them in January of this year. And the reason I was contacted was because the most number of people who live in Rossmore that contact them for assistance was about hearing loss. And they didn't feel that they had all the funds to help all of the people. And they'd been reading about over the counter hearing aids. So they contacted me and asked if I would give a presentation to Rossmore about over the counter hearing aids. So Rossmore fortunately has over 10 hearing loops. And it turned out this is another area to just make sure that you all follow up beforehand. They'd had a problem with one of the loop drivers, and it had recently been replaced. And then with our storms. They had an electrical surge. And it blew out the new hearing loop driver. And the person who installed the hearing loop hadn't given the directions yet. He was going to send him a video on how to activate the hearing loop. The room that we were in is a very large room. And it turned out the first I was there an hour early and I spent the first beginning of this time, sort of panicking but trying to be calm that we would get this hearing loop to work. Without the time that the presentation was to start being called the hearing loop got turned on. Oh my God, it was just heaven. So I would never have been able to understand any of the questions from the audience without the hearing loop. The person who may have assisted the only way I could have understood if I'd had enough presence of mind. It would be if I had a person who was standing next to me who maybe could hear, and they would have repeated the questions. But it's really awkward to do that. So I'm just telling you situations that you may run into, like I ran into. And just keep going. Just do your best. Keep going. Some days. It's not going to be as good as other days. This presentation today may have been better if Sherry had given it because her story would have been here and she has a very powerful story. But she was unable to do that because she's sick. She was transitioned and pivoted and moved into giving this presentation. And it's a little piece about, you know, we all live uncertain lives with our hearing loss. Maybe it benefits us and other parts of our lives too. So my dream is that we have hearing, hearing friendly communities everywhere. This is originally I made this slide to use at the future's meeting, which we hold every year at the HLA convention, and it said San Francisco to New York because that was coast to coast. But I upgraded this for Sherry's presentation to be Seattle to New York. So what do you need to do to do this. You have to have awareness. You have to know and own that you need assistance. And this knowing and owning that you need assistance is when you were just by yourself. So I know that lots of us use our spouses or friends to try and help us out in situations that are difficult for us. But actually, that's not the best thing for us to do. The reason is, if they can't be there, and the accessibility that we need isn't there. We're SOL. If you were out somewhere by yourself, you went shopping, something happened you became ill you were taken by emergency to the hospital, your helper wasn't there. It was really really hard time communicating with hospital staff so you need to be aware of what's required to ask for you have to have courage. And then you have to actually take the action. And when you take the action. That's when change happens. So can you imagine if everywhere we went. There was hearing assistance to help us. And if there was the ear with a slash in it, as often as we see the mobility symbol. If somebody would like to contact Sherry. This is her contact information. And we have a YouTube channel. And so this will be on our YouTube channel it's being recorded today. So you don't really have to write this down you can go back and watch it if you want. And at this time, does anybody have any questions. We're going to open this up for questions. Nobody has any questions about hearing loops or installing them or anything. Yes, I do have that question. You had shown that little box. I'm just wondering I always thought it with a hearing loop you had to have a wire around the room but it sounds like you can just plug that into a TV and everyone in the room. So with the little box, which is the small room loop box. See this black and red back here. The hearing loop wire would go in there and you just click it. So this is not a portable hearing loop. There is a portable hearing loop though. Which is this. And with this, it doesn't really work very well in a room like a TV room. And the reason is because the loop is built into it. But if you were at a counter, you could use this. If you were at a small meeting and maybe there were only two people who had hearing loss in that meeting, you could sit across from this portable hearing loop and run microphones down the table. But if you loop your TV room, you need to do put a wire and you need to do a loop wire around the room. Does that answer your question. The loop wire, what does that look like? I don't know. It looks kind of like an electrical wire. To code an electrical wire. And could it go just from the box to behind? Does it have to go all the way around or just to maybe the sofa where you're sitting? I don't know. That's a whole other thing. So if you wanted to only loop the situation where you normally sit, there's something called a loop pad. And it's a pad about this size. And it has a cable connected to it that fits into the backside of this box. That has the loop in it. So when you sit in your favorite chair, you sit on your couch, the loop is going straight just to you. But other people who are in that room wouldn't have the loop. The chair loop works really good. But the loop has to be a complete loop. If you're running it from the TV, if your box is by the TV and you run it along the side of the room to the opposite side, will everybody along that wall then have access or does it actually have to go around the room? So a loop is a loop. Okay, so anything inside of the loop, anybody inside of the loop with a telecoil, or if you had a receiver should be able to hear what is being transmitted through that loop. I see. Okay. Thank you. So, Lou Touche in Washington State created a small little PowerPoint about how to do this, and I would be happy to send it to you. Just email me after the presentation, and I'll be happy to send that to you. I actually don't think it's on the HLA website, but I'll be happy to send it to you. Any other questions? Kathy, can you see how to raise your hand? I see you raise your hand visibly, but raise your hand in the reactions. So go ahead and ask your question if you can't figure that out. Oh, there you go. Kathy. Okay, I'm here. I had my hand up. I think someone brought my hand down. My question is I have a cochlear implant made by an American. And they told me to use a loop system. I need to use my streamer, my resound streamer, which has programs on it and one of them is a program. I have my own loop system for like my dining room. When I use the streamer to get into the T loop, I guess, into the loop system. Yeah, so Kathy. When did you get your CI? November 22. Okay. So do you have the behind the ear CI, or do you have the Rondo? I have resound hearing aid in one ear. And CI and the other, and I have a resound, no, a mini mic is called. Yeah, okay, so hang on a minute. I just want to be clear here because there's a difference as to which cochlear America's process or you have as to how you connect to a hearing loop. So, do you have the Rondo? Never heard of that word before. Okay. The Rondo is a round disk, like a hockey puck. And it just fits on the processor. It doesn't hang on your ear. Oh, if I'm using the Kanto, which is the kind that just sticks on the head. So the Rondo is a Medell, I think. Oh, Kanto. Thank you, Sarah. Okay. Do you have the Kanto? Yes, I'm Kanto. Okay, so if you'd gotten the cochlear implant by Cochlear Americas that sits on your ear, it has a built-in telecoil. Oh, I'm very sad that nobody told you about the difference between the built-in T-coil on the on the ear model and the Kanto. And if I were in your shoes, I would definitely with irritation tell the person who was your CI audiologist how disappointed you are that they didn't tell you about that because it makes your life more difficult. And there must be a way to access that T-coil on my hands. And so you could, so they didn't put a telecoil in the Kanto. And the, so what they did then was you have the accessory, which Sarah, oh, sir, I know that you have cochlear tumors. It isn't the accessory, the mini mic that has the T-coil in it. Okay. So that means that you always have to have your mini mic with you. So if you went to an event and, you know, when we think of all of the stuff that we have before we go someplace, when I went to Seattle to do that event, I mean, I felt like I had a half a suitcase filled with stuff in case I ever needed it, right? So if you'd gotten the on the ear. CI, you could have just walked into any venue, you could have changed it to that program, you would have been good to go. You could have used your remote to change to that program, you would have been good to go. But since they didn't tell you that to make a choice, you now have the console. And that means that you really, if you're going anywhere, have to keep the mini mic with you, because the mini mic is what connects to the hearing loop. The mini mic has a telecoil on it. Does that make sense? Yes, I, I never go anywhere without the mini loop. But are you saying I could have ordered a canso with a key coil knob on it or something? No, no, so Cochlear Americas makes two different models of cochlear implant processors. One is a little round disk kind of looks like a hockey puck. And you just put it on the magnet on the back of your head. And that model is called the console. Then they make what's considered the most common kind of CI, which is an on the ear model. I'm going to take mine off so you can see it. So AB, I happen to have advanced bionics has a feature nobody else has this little microphone here. So if it were cochlear Americas, you wouldn't have that it would be the ear hook and the back. And if you had gotten this particular, oh, Mark Goldberg, Mark, are you holding up the console? Yeah, so Mark was holding up the console. So if you had gotten the on the ear model, a telecoil is built into it. Right. DNA, it's called DNA versus I think it's called Kanto Kanto. Thank you. I understand models. One of the board of Kanto with the tree coil model, you're saying I could have ordered the or the over the year. No, the Kanto doesn't have a built in telecoil. Right. Okay. Thank you so much. Yes. Another question anybody. I want to mention something to people here since this came up about the mini mic. So if you happen to go someplace, I believe the mini mic has an audio port on it. If you go someplace, any place that has an audio port like let's say you're on the airplane and you want to understand the announcements. If you take an audio cable, and you plug one part into your mini mic, and the other part into any audio place, it should stream directly to your devices. Okay, so and an audio port looks like. Like this. Okay, so one part would go into, in this case, the mini mic. The other part would plug right into your seat on the airplane to plug into your seat could plug into any audio device that you wanted to hear from that had an audio port. If you went someplace that had an FM system. You would be able to take your mini mic plug one side into your mini mic and plug the other side into the receiver. So this happens to be a hearing loop receiver. So, and if you had a telecoil in your device you wouldn't need this, but imagine if this wasn't a hearing loop receiver but it was an FM receiver. One side in here, one side in your mini mic, and it would stream directly to your device. Any more questions. Well, if you think of something just raise your hand, because I have some more things to share with you. We have some announcements. So the most important thing we have coming up is June 3 as the walk for hearing. And the rest of the presentation I'm going to do a very short about the walk for hearing on June 29 through July 1st. HLA has their convention and their convention is going to be in New Orleans this year. And if you've never attended one of our conventions, please come and join us. We'll be giving two presentations there this year. One is going to be about a leadership development and another one as a get in the hearing loop presentation. We've decided to have a brown bag picnic this year. It's going to be on July 15 at Rossmore. And on August 5 we're having a presentation a technology presentation about hearing restoration. So this is what we've used before for walk for hearing and I have a little video that I created. I hope it runs well and you can hear you can see it all. Oh, let me make this screen a little bigger. And let's see what happens. It worked. Yay. I'm never really sure when I when I do these new things like that. All of you to walk with us to step up, become a member of the HLA a Diabla Valley team and to make a donation. We know that all of you can afford $15 which is the smallest donation that you can make online. You know, you can't go to a movie for 15 bucks if it's during prime time right. We don't have the money HLA doesn't have the money in our chapters doesn't have the money to do advocacy efforts like all of us being in Seattle for the American Academy of audiology convention. Those things cost money. And if we want to continue to have things like that. We want to continue to have a great public policy person Lisa Hamlin for HLA a we all need to step up and contribute. So where will it be. It's going to be the same place it was last year. It's at the Robert W Crown Memorial State Beach in Alameda. And while we were waiting for everybody to show up. Zo hair was reminiscing about how nice it was last year there. So here would you like to say make a little plug about how much you liked it and why you thought it was a great location. And you have to unmute yourself. So, I went to that walk of walk for hearing for the first time. Last year, it was at Alameda and the weather was just gorgeous. And the location right by the by the bay is just is absolutely fantastic. And there was a very large group of people and, you know, because of COVID we hadn't seen each other for a very long time. So it was really nice to reconnect with all friends and just had a very pleasant walk and and also just the energy of the crowd and the people was infectious. Anyway, I'm certainly going again and I encourage everyone to attend. Thanks. Oh, here. And Sarah also had the best idea, even continuing the walk. So the walk ends around 1130 1145 noon time ish. And Sarah, you want to talk about your picnic. You have to unmute yourself. Thank you. So, hi everybody. I'm Sarah Ozer from the North Bay chapter for Marin and Sonoma counties. So we went last year to the walk for hearing. And like Zoher was saying, it was a beautiful day. And we saw lots of people and looked at the tables. There's different exhibitors. And we did the walk and then afterwards we had a picnic and we brought had brought our own food brought our own cooler and it's just so great. So we'll be picnicking again. You can join us for picnic or join, you know, sure. So, yeah, just make a day of it and get to know people. I think that's one of the great things about HLAA is that we get to make friends with people from different places. See you then. Thanks, Sarah. You can click on this QR code. Or I think if we don't have it on there yet, we'll put it on our website so you can do that from there. What happens is another page opens up and this is the page. The walk for hearing website can be kind of confusing. So if you have problems with it, please reach out to me or to Alan could Sarah, we're trying to make it so it's the easiest as possible for you to just make a donation. And so this is what the page looks like it already tells you it's 2013. And you need to make sure that you specify which chapter you want your donation to go to because the funds that are raised are split. So HLAA gets, I think it's 50%, 10% goes to the walk, the actual running the walk, and then the other 40% goes to whichever chapter you designate. We have our convention coming up. We've mentioned that. And not very many people from our chapter usually go to the convention. I don't think Bob's Astro is missed one though in that was in person, ever. But for the rest of you, I really highly recommend it and you can still go this year. It's just truly awe inspiring to see how many of us that there are to be with other people that you never have to say, or feel bad because you're asking somebody to repeat themselves. Because everybody is asking people to repeat themselves. It's, it's, it's wonderful. I hope you have an opportunity to go. We're also having our brown bag picnic. And we decided to do in the past we provided everything for everybody. I'm older now that we're at three years into the pandemic and it's really getting hard for me to lug all that stuff around anymore. We also felt that it was more of a safety feature if everybody brought their own food and things, and then it was easy for everybody to come. We're calling it a brown bag picnic and it's going to be in Shady Glen and Rossmore from 11 to three. And that's going to be on July 15 and we'll send out another invitation for everybody so that we have a night with directions so that we have an idea of who's going to come just so that we have no. We have a YouTube channel. And most of our monthly meetings have been on our YouTube channel there are a few that may not be there because we had some kind of a technical glitch. Maybe we forgot to turn on the recording, something like that. We're also looking for committee members. So ahead of our programs committee, we meet once a month and schedule the meetings out through the whole year. And at this time I think that we have all of our meetings set up for 2023. So now we're looking at what we're going to do in 2024. We've had some discussion with other chapters and Northern California, and one of the things we're discussing is it turns out right now. We're giving a presentation, Sarah in the North Bay is giving a presentation, the East Bay is giving a presentation and the peninsula is giving a presentation. We're kind of talking about, could we give instead of four presentations a month and we're all volunteers, could we give one presentation, a month that was all of the Northern California chapters, and then we would alternate as to who would give the presentation. And that's what you know about some of the things that we're exploring, because you know, volunteering is exhausting. Can be fun, but also can be exhausting. Okay, so on our website we'd like to remind everybody that we are a membership organization, everybody's free to attend all of our meetings. We're open to the public. But we'd also really like it if you became a member. So, if you click on the membership menu bar item the tab up there, what opens up is the page that you see, you can go ahead and renew your membership online, and it's through PayPal, but you don't have to have a PayPal account, or you could send it to us via us mail and we've included the post office box. Here's the information for our chapter. This isn't this is the general information box. If there's something that you would like to know more about if you'd like more personal hold handing, hand holding, we're here to help you. So, please feel free to contact us. So, does anybody have any news. Did anybody do something that they want to make sure that we all know about or is anybody having problems with an area that they think that there might be somebody here could help them a little bit. I see that Alan put the donation link into the chat. So, if somebody just wanted to go ahead and copy that it would make it might make it easier for them to find where the donate pages. I heard that the American Red Cross has a program going to be able to get a smoke and carbon monoxide detector in your home. So I went to their website and I signed up and I received a message from them but I have not connected to them fully yet. So I'm letting all of you know that you may want to go to their website as well to see if you can get a smoke and carbon monoxide detector from them. So I've kind of learned if I just wait a little while sometimes somebody has a question that they thought of and I'm going to give you that time to think about that. If nobody has anything else to say, nobody has anything else they'd like to talk about. Oh, Sarah. Can you give a plug for your hope meetings. So each one of us is doing different things in the Bay Area and Sarah is doing has continued to do this fabulous program and it's been open to all of us. And I haven't been as diligent as maybe I could have been to make sure everybody knows every month, but it's on the HLA website it's on their calendar, and it's called hope hearing other people's stories and Sarah why it's all yours now. Sure. Thanks, Anne. And yeah, hope is our support group and everybody's welcome. And it's on the fourth Thursday of the month, which is Thursday, May 25. It's at four o'clock Pacific time. You can find information, a link on our website hearing loss North Bay. org. I'll put it in the chat, or maybe someone can put it in the chat hearing loss North Bay. org. In addition to that on May 11. Next week, this coming week, which is our regular chapter meeting on the second Thursday, we're going to be trying out the zoom breakout rooms. We now have captioning in zoom breakout rooms we requested them and got them. So, please join us for a clock we're going to everybody will go to three different rooms to talk to different people. We're going to go back to the big room and share our experience. So we're looking to see how we can further use these breakout rooms and meetings. So again, everybody is welcome. And it's hearing loss North Bay. org. If you'd like to contact us and thanks and for giving me this opportunity. I can put the link in the chat for people to easily be able to connect on that. So I think we need to thank our captioner today. Rhonda. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I'm glad that we were finally able to connect even though we had a difficult start here. You really know how much easier you make all of our lives. And so I really want to thank you for the wonderful captions that you've provided us. And for just another reminder for all of you here too, if you have any meeting that's three or more people. We have California RCC remote captions that are available to you to sign up on sign up for which is what these are and they're excellent excellent captions. Thank you everybody. So I guess I'm not going to see you next month because we don't have a meeting because we have the walk for hearing on. Oh, excuse me, I'll see everybody at the walk right. We won't have a meeting because it's on the same day that the walk is in July we'll have our picnic. So I'll see hopefully all of you at the picnic. And then in August we're going to resume our zoom meetings. It's been really nice seeing all of you today. I hope that you like the spur of the moment presentation and that it fulfilled your needs and you learn something. Bye. Yeah, thank you. And your, your share was fabulous. Oh, excellent. Thank you so much. Thanks that makes me feel good. Thank you for going to email or text me the list of Ross more places that I can hear. Yeah, thank you. Thank you for all your service. Thank you for your service everybody. You can join us.