Oliver is the director of a design academy in Victoria. As director, he’s a man of many hats, having a hand in everything from human resources to IT support to public outreach.

“My challenge is adapting to a rapid loss of hearing,” he shares. “This impacts my ability to communicate.”

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David is a lead hand supervisor at a post-secondary institution in Kelowna. He is in charge of a wide variety of tasks on campus from event set-up to installing whiteboards to snow removal.

David has suffered from hearing loss since he was born. This can make many parts of his job, which requires a lot of communication with college staff, a lot tougher.

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Calendars have been used as our primary means of organizing and scheduling for thousands of years, so it perhaps shouldn’t be much of a surprise that even in the digital era that we live in today, the basic structure and utility of the calendar hasn’t really changed, although it certainly has become digitized. This is great news for individuals who struggle with reading, writing, and executive functioning, or for anyone who simply forgets to, or chooses not to use paper calendars, because with this digitization comes convenience, and most importantly, an increase in accessibility.

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Dana works as a real-time transcriber for post-secondary students, largely at the University of Victoria, captioning lectures for students who are hard of hearing or deaf.

However, Dana was finding she was struggling with her own hearing.

“I often work in a team with another transcriber, so I would notice they were getting things — mostly student comments that were across the room — that I wasn’t fully hearing. As you can imagine, where my job is to actually hear for someone, this became quite alarming,” she explains.

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Lisa works as a seniors program coordinator at a recreation centre in Coquitlam.

“My daily work environment varies from morning to afternoon, and from day to day. Sometimes I’m one-on-one with the seniors, other times I’m running a large group event. Some days I conduct small workshops. Some days there are staff meetings or board meetings,” she explains.

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Russell has worked as an inside sales representative for a building materials company in Chilliwack for nearly a decade.

Having “grown into” the role after having had to transition to less physical work following a hernia operation, Russell found his groove, doing everything from over the counter and phone sales to providing quotes for construction companies.

However, he was facing a significant barrier in this line of work.

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Jamie is a sales professional based in Kelowna.

It’s a job that requires him to be focused in conversations with clients and staff, something that was becoming hard to do with his hearing loss.

“The decline in my hearing made it very difficult to follow conversations — there were many times I misinterpreted a conversation only to add input that was incorrect as a result,” he admits.

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“Assistive Technology Services helped me to get a full time job,” Hao beams.

Today, Hao works as a banker in New Westminster, helping customers meet their financial needs and advising financial solutions.

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As a bank teller in Kelowna, Natasha helps hundreds of clients a week with their banking transactions. She also has hearing loss in both ears.

“This affects my ability to understand what clients and co-workers need. It is a very loud and distracting environment with a lot of background noise,” Natasha shares. “People speaking in different tones, or with accents, or over the phone can be challenging to comprehend.”

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Since the original roll out of extensions in 2010, Google Chrome has become a leading hub of accessible apps for PC and Mac computers. Many of these apps are free or free to try, thus providing users with an exposure to accessibility that was never possible before, and with Chrome being responsible for over half off all of the world’s internet traffic, accessible apps and features have never been more mainstream. And, thanks to the open-sourced origins of this browser, new accessibility extensions are being added every day.

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