Working for a home care provider in Kelowna, Karen helps clients live in their own homes by coming over and helping them with tasks ranging from meal prep to dressing and bathing.

Karen was finding, however, that she needed help herself.

“I am a middle aged woman in fair health with a hearing impairment,” she explains. “I cannot always hear what clients are saying.”

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Tessa couldn’t be happier with the accommodations she received through WorkBC Assistive Technology Services.

“I cannot stress enough how important these accommodations were to giving me the opportunity to continue my education. I highly doubt that going back to school would be possible without the proper equipment that was provided to me,” she says. “Not only does this help me with work, but it gives me hope in a brighter future.”

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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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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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