Impact Of Technology On The Deaf Community (Essay Sample)

There are a plethora of people who are blind or deaf, but not many that are both. Helen Keller is famous for being both blind and deaf, and having accomplished so many amazing things. Keller was born June 27 1880 and at only 19 months old she came down with an illness that left her blind and deaf. At six years old, her mother and father hired her a teacher, Annie Sullivan, to try and help her learn ways to communicate. Within months Helen learned how to feel an object and associate it with a word that Annie spelled in her hand, she also learned how to read by the feeling of raised letters on a piece of cardboard, and she could start writing by arranging words in a frame. When she became older Keller had some astonishing accomplishments, she wrote books like The Story of My Life, Optimism, The World I Live In,  and many more. Keller also then started to give lectures for the American Foundation for the Blind which earned her $2 million dollar endowment fund. Helen also founded the American Civil Liberties Union with Roger Nash Baldwin, and with this foundation they helped improve the way disabled people were treated. The Louis Braille system, modern advancements for the deaf, and resources like guide dogs could have improved Helens quality of life tremendously and would have helped her with learning ways to communicate with other people.

The Louis Braille System is a system of raised dots on a page for blind people to learn how to read and write. A French man named Louis Braille invented this system but was inspired by a captain in Napoleon's Army, Charles Barbier. The captain went to Louis school one day and showed them the soldiers “night writing” so that they could communicate with each other without speaking. Since Louis was blinded at the age of three, he decided in 1824 that he was going to create the Louis Braille system. Louis thought that instead of just having raised letters on a piece of paper, that it would be easier for a blind person to read raised dots instead. So he then made a 63 character code arranged on a six position matrix or a cell. Braille made the six dot cell system which had numbers one, two, and three going downward on the left side and numbers four, five, and six going downward on the right. Then the letters of the Latin alphabet have a different amount of dots for each letter going vertically or horizontally. The Louis Braille system made huge advancements for blind people all over the world and is continuing to help blind people today, and as Louis would say, “Braille is knowledge, and knowledge is power”.

There have been many advancements for hard of hearing or completely deaf people, there is new technology like the Phonak Roger Pen, Covo Light Application, and the Google Glass invention. The Phonak Roger Pen is specifically designed to help students in class but also anyone when having a conversation with someone. This pen has a built-in microphone that is able to connect to a hearing aid so it amplifies the voice of the person talking. Normal hearing aids sometimes have a difficult time picking up sounds when someone is far away, so this pen could help many people have an easier time listening to other people talk. Then there is the Convo Light Application, this is so when a deaf person receives a notification or call on their phone, the house changes to a different color. This is to prevent the deaf person from missing an important call or message they might have received because they didn’t notice their phone buzzing. The last advancement is the Google Glass, these are wearable glasses that turn speech into text whenever a person is talking so that way there isn’t as much miscommunication. This product still has a few kinks but google is trying to fix them to make life for deaf people better.