“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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Heather Ritchie, MSc, Aud(C), RAUD, RHIP

Registered Audiologist & Hearing Instrument Practitioner

Heather graduated with an Honours Bachelor of Health Science from the University of Ottawa in 2014. She discovered her passion for evidence-based practice while working for several years in the field of medical imaging research at The Ottawa Hospital. Heather joined the Neil Squire team after earning her Master of Science in Audiology from the University of British Columbia’s School of Audiology and Speech Sciences in 2019. As a certified audiologist, she is registered with the College of Speech and Hearing Health Professionals of British Columbia (CSHBC).

As each person’s journey to better hearing is unique, Heather strives to develop strategies that are tailored to each person’s requirements. She closely follows the newest developments in hearing research, using recent advances in technology to find these unique solutions for her clients’ communication needs. She finds it deeply rewarding to help people achieve their potential and watch the quality of their lives improve.

Heather is currently pursuing her advanced certification in Cerumen Management, as well as the UBC Award of Achievement in American Sign Language (ASL).

Visit Heather Ritchie’s profile page on LinkedIn.

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Thomas has dealt with hearing loss for over 20 years. As a geoscientist for much of that time, his hearing loss didn’t significantly affect his work.

“I often worked in remote locations and interacted with just a handful of people,” he says.

After losing that position due to a layoff, however, he found new jobs in first aid and security, and found it much harder to get by.

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Zhi, of Vancouver, has worked at a bakery for nearly 20 years. He does a little bit of everything, from packaging to preparing the dough to applying icing to cakes, even stepping in to do delivery across the Lower Mainland when required.

He’s a dependable hard worker who likes his workplace, having “made a lot of friends along the way.” He’s also been diagnosed with hearing loss in both ears.

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Theresa is a kitchen designer and office manager for a small cabinet shop in Langley.

“I work very closely with our customers from the first time they enter our showroom through to installation and deficiency completion,” she explains.

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Over the past few years, OCR (Optical Character Recognition) apps have been gaining increased popularity among both mainstream users and individuals with disabilities. Because this technology allows users to easily digitize and edit print-based documents, books, photos and more using their smartphones built-in camera, the barrier to alternative, digitized means of expression for individuals who struggle with print-based disabilities is becoming smaller and smaller. In the past, individuals with print-based disabilities would have to seek out alternative formats for learning content, a process that was often both costly and difficult. With OCR apps, individuals with disabilities can quite literally take matters into their own hands.

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While Apple is known for offering products with some the most complete built-in accessibility features available, many of the companies’ competitors have been putting similar focus into offering products with equally impressive built-in accessibility features. Microsoft, Samsung, Google, and many other tech giants have put a level of focus on accessibility that is unprecedented, and these innovations are happening fast, with many platforms and operating systems releasing major accessibility upgrades with every major update.

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Since its initial release in 2010, the iPad has set the golden standard for built-in accessibility features, and Apple’s accessibility innovations have continued to be developed at an impressive speed. Each major update contains new accessibility features, improvements, and fixes, greatly improving and enhancing the overall user experience, especially for those users who take advantage of the many accessibility features on offer.

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Good nutrition is a significant but often overlooked aspect of health, and studies have shown that healthy eating has a significant impact on an individuals physical and mental well-being. In fact, the study linked above asserts that “…nutrition services and programmes for children and adults can act as entry points to address and, in some cases, avoid or mitigate disability”. Of course, the challenge is, when physical or learning disabilities affect an individual’s independence, it becomes that much harder to maintain good nutrition and stay in good physical and mental health.

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