Wow – what an experience! I attended the CHHA National Conference in Halifax this May. It was a stellar event, and I’m most grateful to CHHA Manitoba Chapter for its generous contribution to my travel expenses. I met many of the people I’d only ever read about in newsletters, including the National office staff. And I also connected face-to-face with several people I’ve been in touch with by email. One special contact was Brian Marshall who is chair of the Meniere’s/Tinnitus Resource Group for Newfoundland and Labrador.
Gladys Nielsen and I had the privilege of presenting information about our chapter’s Hard of Hearing Hospital Kits. We appreciated the great support we had from Kathy Grabowecky from SMD Clearinghouse. In fact, we’d have been sunk without Kathy’s technical support in setting up our equipment and her further help in scribing audience feedback during the roundtable session at the end of our presentation. The presentation itself went very well, with a significant number of people participating in the feedback session.
A new experience for me was using a special headset to connect to the loop system that was provided in all the meeting rooms. If my hearing aids had been equipped with t-coils I would only have had to switch the mode to have each speaker’s voice fed directly into my hearing aids. But the headset provided an excellent example of how a t-coil works and sounds with a loop system – and also with a telephone. So, for my next set of hearing aids – gimme a t-coil!
Joanne Craig