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I've been here since the end of '02. I lost my second eye in August of '03.
Wasn't supposed to lose it. Doctor made a mistake.
That took away my independence. I had to give up my driving.
The telephone that we helped Alex to get was the Clarity
That's a JV35
JV35 is the one that's not cordless. That's this one with the big buttons.
When you press these buttons, they have a talking keypad.
Yes. They talk to me.
So how is that helpful?
Oh, that is a godsend for a guy without eyes. Because you pick it up and you dial a number you
plug in as you're dialing your number, like 4-9-7,
it will tell you 4 9 7 it reads the number to you.
And someplace here there ís a redial button.
So you can hear the number you just dialed.
Oh, it's a godsend. It really is.
Because you're not able to see the numbers very clearly with just your eyes, right?
So if you can hear them and see them at the same time that's helpful.
Very much so.
You not only have a vision loss but you also have a hearing loss.
I have a hearing loss.
So there was a feature on this phone that we used with your hearing aid.
Yeah.
Some hearing aids have a t-switch, a telephone switch,
that can pick up a magnetic signal. So that when you plug into the telephone,
and you turn on your telephone switch, it actually picks up the signal
from the phone and your hearing aids become the receiver.
So it really makes it a lot clearer.
It works quite well.
How about we show them how we did it?
This is the neck loop.
And this little device sends the signal right up into the hearing aid.
But you have to plug it into something.
You plug it into the side of the telephone. (phone: 8-7-7-4-4-6) Makes it much louder.
Does that go right into your hearing aid? You turn the switch on?
Mmm-hmmm, yeah. (phone:8-8-8) It gives it more volume.
I'll put it into my little trusty here and if I don't want to do that,
I like this better. I can hook it onto here.
Oh, that's a good idea. This phone has a round red light here.
So when the phone rings, that light flashes. (ring!)
So someone who might have a hearing loss, maybe
you don't have your hearing aids in, the phone is ringing the light will
flash and you catch that out of the side of your eye.
I use this plus the strobe light.
We have a signaler, a little box like this (ringing phone) that is also
plugged into the phone jack. And when the phone rings it flashes
a strobe light. But it's also very loud.
This is the voice activated dialer, which we haven't covered yet because
we're trying to do one thing at a time. But it's really no bigger than a candy bar maybe.
What is does is, it's mostly for people who either don't have mobility or who don't
have good eyesight, and they find they have trouble dialing. You see that you plug in
the power here, the electricity, here is a jack that you plug into the back of your phone,
and then this jack goes into the wall jack. You hook it up to the telephone line. And
then what happens is, when you pick up your phone, the little box says, name to dial please,
and you say Mary Lou, or Alex, or Julia, and it will dial that name for you. Of course
you have to preprogram the names into it. But once you've programmed those names in,
every time you pick up the phone it says, name to dial please. One of the things that
I really enjoy about my job is that when I go into a home like this and I see someone
that benefits from the equipment, it just makes all my work worthwhile, you know? So
itís a great program, it really is.
But without it, a man without sight like myself, I'd be lost without this equipment.
Take the telephone away from me and who am I gonna talk to all day?
Absolutely nobody. This puts me in touch with the world.