Over 35 years as a flight attendant, Wanda faced difficulties because of her hearing loss. During the pandemic, mask wearing made it even tougher to read lips, and she retired early.

“Financial constraints made acquiring new hearing aids impossible,” she says.

Still looking to work, her audiologist at Island Deaf and Hard of Hearing Centre referred her to WorkBC Assistive Technology Services for funding for a new set of hearing aids.

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Today officially marks our 40^th anniversary! We couldn’t be more grateful to all of our participants, volunteers, supporters, partners, and everyone who has helped us on our journey to 40 years of impact.

When 21-year-old university student Neil Squire was paralyzed in a car accident, his cousin Bill Cameron, an engineer, worked with a small group of volunteers to create a device to help Neil speak. Before long, Bill realized that his mission was bigger than just helping family. When Neil passed away in 1984, a non-profit organization was formed in his name. Forty years later, Bill’s legacy continues, and Neil lives on everyday in the work we do.

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It’s hard for me to believe that we are 40 years in and counting. In some ways, it doesn’t seem that long ago that I was working with Neil as he was learning Morse code with his state-of-the-art Apple IIe computer — it had 64 KB of memory, and believe it or not, that was considered massive for a personal computer. (Compare that with the memory on your smart phone right now just to put it into perspective).

As we celebrate 40 years of impact, it had me reflecting on my early days working with Neil even before the organization was formally founded, and one particularly important lesson I learned early on.

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Mary has her own business, organizing and decorating homes on a contract basis. She has significant hearing loss.

“This hearing loss impeded my ability to deal with potential clients, clients, and coworkers. I was unable to hear anyone who wasn’t directly facing me,” she shares.

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Summer vacation is fast approaching, and you may be wondering how to keep your child engaged in reading and learning over break. And while trips to the library are a great way to do that, not everyone lives close to a library, and, for some learners with learning disabilities, printed text can be difficult to work with.

That’s what makes Epic so appealing. The app features over forty thousand books and audiobooks for kids aged three to twelve, and it’s designed to be as accessible as possible. Besides being integrated with users’ built-in accessibility features such as VoiceOver, Be My Eyes, and Live Transcribe, Epic also provides their own built-in features such as speech-to-text, audiobooks, and even their own unique approach to storytelling called Read-To-Me books. Read-To-Me books are professionally narrated books that automatically turn the pages and highlight words are they are being read.

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Rita is currently looking for employment, while working one day a week at a church in Trail. She is also taking courses to stay up-to-date on her skills. She has tinnitus, which she describes as “24/7” ringing in her ears.

Her employment counselor at the local WorkBC Centre referred her to WorkBC Assistive Technology Services for funding for new hearing aids.

With her new hearing aids she received thanks to the help from WorkBC Assistive Technology Services, Rita feels much more confident in her job search.

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Thanks to funding from WorkBC Assistive Technology Services, Rhonda, a teacher, was able to get her first set of hearing aids.

“After 46 years of living with hearing loss, I was finally able to access technology that helps me hear better. I have heard things I never knew made noise! It is quite shocking to me to realize how deaf I am. I thought I had relatively minor hearing loss, but with the help of the Assistive Technology Services program, I realized that I was putting significant time and energy to struggle to hear daily,” she shares.

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Today we are joined once again by Nakia Singh. On today’s episode we talk about the recent Google I/O conference on AI, why it just might be worth paying the subscription fee for Gemini Pro, and finally, we talk about the specific ways in which AI can be used as assistive technology.

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Bernard is a housekeeper in Whistler, and he has hearing loss. Through WorkBC Assistive Technology Services, he received funding for hearing aids that help him on the job.

“Assistive Technology Services has changed my life in a way that it was able to provide me financial support so I could get hearing aids that I couldn’t afford, as it was very expensive,” he shares.

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AI chatbots like Chat GPT, Gemini and CO Pilot are becoming increasingly common every day. They can be used for all sorts of tasks including research, writing, general communication, and more. These open-source AI tools are (mostly) free, but they typically offer a premium version of the software with increased functionality and limitless conversations for an additional fee.

Today we are going to do a brief overview of one of our favorite AI chatbots, and as we do, we’ll try to show a few scenarios where this software might be especially useful.

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