Today, the greatest challenges that most individuals living with deaf-blindness face are:

1. obtaining adequate amounts of Individual Support Services Provision to access the community [Read more] and
2. obtaining available Assistive Technologies to access information. [Read more ]

A deaf-blind member waits with his SSP as an insructor gets him prepared to ascend a climbing wall at the National Convention for the Deaf-Blind.

Testimony 1:

I am a deaf-blind woman living in Tucson, AZ. In 1933, I was born without any disability, but when I was 18 month old I contracted spinal meningitis. At that time there were no antibiotics, and after a severe illness with a fever of 105 for six months, I gradually recovered, but was totally blind and very hard of hearing. Over time I lost more of my hearing until I was considered functionally deaf in 1990. In 2004, I was provided with a cochlear implant, and now have adequate hearing for environmental sounds, and a little speech comprehension, but not really enough to function without assistance out in the community. I was able to get a good education and I graduated from the University of Utah with a bachelor of Fine Arts degree with a major in music and a minor in English literature in 1956. I could still hear enough at that time to teach piano lessons to children, even children with all their sight and hearing. Within about 10 year I lost enough of my hearing so that I could no longer teach music.

Over the years I have done a lot of different kinds of work, and at this time I have my own small business making and selling Print/Braille greeting cards. For this I do need a lot of help from sighed people. I have to have someone type all the messages from the cards, which I buy commercially, into my computer, and then I make them in Braille to put into the cards.

On a daily basis I can manage pretty well within my own home, I cook our meals, clean, wash and iron our clothes, make a garden, etc. I am married to a deaf-blind man who is also able to do many things around the house and yard, and does quite a lot of his own house repairs and manages small building projects to improve our home. However, when we leave our home, we both need assistance. We need help to go shopping, do business, go to the doctor, go to the gym, etc. For these things we need Support Service Providers, or SSPs. These folks are trained to guide us, interpret for us, and help us in many ways to access the community. Because of the limited funding that we are now experiencing there is never enough of this service. Very often things don't work the way one would like. We try to pick up our medications when we go shopping, but we must have our SSPs call in the refills when they get to our home, which then means that often we cannot pick them up until the next day, and that quite often results in a whole week's delay, as we do not have another SSP for another week. In this way we often run out of our medications several days before we can get the refills. We also need someone to fill out paperwork for us for medical or business purposes, and often that is very difficult to get in time for deadlines.

2 females and 1 male who have various degrees of combined vision and hearing loss view large-print-text of what is being said at the AzADB meeting.

Testimony 2:

Problems I encounter in my daily life are many now that I'm not only deaf but slowly losing my sight as well.  Up until 1993 I was fully employed and was hard of hearing for many years but was able to be independent and still work and drive a car.  However I was struck with optic nerve damage, which changed my whole world around.  I lost my job, could no longer drive and lost most of my independence.  I had to rely on others to take me for basic needs such as groceries, doctor appointment, etc.

Now, 16 years later, I'm faced with Macular degeneration, which is taking more of my vision and making it even harder for me to cope with every day problems.  Between the deafness and the loss of vision I have very little social life.  It is getting harder to read the captions on TV and since I can't understand the spoken words that will no longer be enjoyable. 

I enjoy my home and garden and my ability to still read with the aid of a small magnifier attached to one lens of my glasses.  Other than that I spend most of my time at home alone.

A deaf-blind man stands at a street corner while looking for assistance to help him safely cross a street while traveling to the AzADB meeting.