There are technology developments that make communication accessible such as VRS—but there is also technology that does not make things accessible such as voice recognition.

Voice recognition is when someone speaks to a device and the device understands what is spoken into it. It seems cool, but many of us deaf people do not have perfect speech and those devices won’t be able to understand us and then would not be useful.

There are some cool software products out there but to use it you have to be able to speak. Then we deaf people cannot use such products because some of us cannot speak as clearly as others.

Technology can go both ways–it can make life easier, and it can limit our lives. So we need to be on the lookout for such things and raise our voice when such things limit our ability to use those devices.

Dr. Z cares about your communication access.

Disclaimer: Dr. Z (Philip Bravin) is currently the Vice-President of Marketing at CSDVRS, LLC.