We're helping folks with hearing loss
Most of our blog posts have been about the Washington State Communication Access Project (Wash-CAP), and what we are doing to make Washington's public places more accessible to people with hearing loss.
While those efforts are the ones that show up in the news, we are also working to vindicate the legal rights of private individuals related to their hearing losses. Here is a sample of that work:
-- A union electrician needed sign-language interpreters to attend classes required for his continued certification, but the school -- a joint enterprise of contractors and the union -- took the position that the electrician needed to pay for the interpreters himself. We believe that under both Washington state law and federal law, that position is dead wrong, and after the school failed to respond to our letters, we filed suit. The result was an admission of error, an apology, and an amicable resolution of the matter for the future.
-- A woman's Cochlear Implant was failing, her doctor recommended implanting the other ear, but questions remain about whether Medicare will pay for a second implant. We helped find a medical facility that navigated through that maze, and performed the implant.
-- A social worker employed by the state was having difficulty keeping up with her workload, because the ambient noise in her office meant she had to look directly at her clients in order to speech read, and she couldn't do the computer entries at the same time. With our participation in the state's Reasonable Accommodation process, the worker now has a private and quiet office.
-- A health-care worker was forbidden to apply for a job she wanted because management believed her hearing loss would make it impossible for her to do the job. We filed suit on her behalf, and will argue that this kind of paternalism, however innocently intended, is wholly impermissible because if people are not given the chance to fail, they won't have the chance to succeed to their full potential.
-- A client in Texas lost her job as a financial controller when her company down-sized, and has been unable to find replacement work. She had a disability-insurance policy that would pay benefits if she had a disability, was unable to earn her pre-disability income and there was a substantial connection between the disability and the inability to earn. We worked with her on filing a claim for benefits. While we realize that this is a difficult economy, we think the extra handicap imposed by her hearing loss is the sort of connection that warrants an award of insurance benefits. We are cautiously optimistic as we await the decision.
If you have a question about your rights or the rights of a spouse or child with a hearing loss, please get in touch with us for a no-risk, no-obligation evaluation of your situation.
