I think I met Peter at the ARO convention a few years ago. ARO was
awesome for accomodations. If you are into hard-core hearing
research it is a great convention. I would have to say it was a bit
over my head, though. LOL.

Anyway ARO is a small convention in comparison to AAA. At least it
was when I was there. There may have been two simultaneous classes
whereas AAA has dozens. I am not making excuses... but I do think if
we want this extent of accessiblity we have ALOT of work cut out for
us. I think we should compare apples to apples where possible. Does
anyone know of a convention that has as many simultaneous classses
and still offers this amount of accessiblity?

I think, unfortunatly, this is going to be about money. We will have
to get big bucks sponsors to make it happen. I know that captionists
are expensive. When I requested captioning services for myself at a
university day-conference last year I discovered that they paid
$30.00/hour for her to provide that service. I think I only paid
$30.00 to go. So, for an 8 hour conference... they lost alot of
money on me. Now imagine AAA having a CART provider for every
class. They would need probably 30 CART providers all day. That is
$7200.00/day times five days. Thats $36,000.00 for the convention.
Now that is not including the other accommodations we are asking
for... interpretors, ALDs, etc.

I believe we can do this, but I think we should all be aware of what
we are really asking for and why we will have resistance and why we
need to get as many people on board as possible. I think we should
start asking our colleagues if they support this and if they would be
okay with raising convention registration to pay for it. There were
7400 registered this year. So, even if they only paid an extra
$10.00 we would be able to provide the CART services.

For some reason I feel like I have typed this out before.

Anyway. As Peter from DHHS mentioned, we need to start now for next
year's convention. We can each help the effort by writing to our
board and academy staff and posting your feedback on SoundOff and
other listservs.

Our group can also make a difference if enough people are willing to
put their "name" to it. In the past it has been hard to co-ordinate
that. Now, we may have some internet tools that will allow this to
occur and unite us despite the distance. Hopefully the PBWiki will
be one such tool.

I'm enjoying the posts. Keep them coming.

Suzanne

--- In HOHAudiologists@yahoogroups.com, Rachel Berman <heartie7@...>
wrote:
>
> This is an email from a fellow DHHS member in response to the
accessibility
> issue at conventions. Read on :)
>
> Rachel
>
> ------ Forwarded Message
> From: Peter Steyger <steygerp@...>
> Reply-To: <DHHS-SpeakUp@yahoogroups.com>
> Date: Mon, 23 Apr 2007 12:00:12 -0700
> To: <DHHS-SpeakUp@yahoogroups.com>
> Subject: [DHHS-SpeakUp] Accessibility at professional conferences
>
>
>
>
>
> Hi Rachel:
>
> Advocacy is Key here.
>
> A group of d and hoh members/attendees at the Association for
Research
> in Otolaryngology (ARO) have advocated for accessibility at their
> conference over the years, and have obtained coverage that now
borders
> on the fabulous scale we see at AGBell conventions: full CART
provision
> for ALL oral presentations, ALDs in all rooms, and sign
> interps/transliterators for attendees that need them for poster
> sessions.
>
> X-Hotmail-From: From my experience with this issue, the critical
thing is
> not
> acceptance of need in principle, but
>
> 1) willingness and effort of the organizers and the AAA
Board/Council
> to locate the $$$ required
> 2) organization and planning for implementaion by the meeting
planners
>
> both of these issues need time ahead of the conference to implement,
> and thus advocacy needs to begin NOW for next year's conference,
and to
> get the AAA board and planners on board.
>
> The effort you put into this is great experience in organizational
> planning, and interaction. It also gives you great exposure and can
> advance your professional career. It certainly did for me, so view
this
> as an opportunity to make an impact.
>
> if you need a letter from me to AAA, I'd be happy to write one
> explaining what we did at ARO.
>
> I am aware of several audiologists who are members of DHHS and if
y'all
> band together, a critical mass can make this requirement become
> extremely imparative and politically necessary by AAA.
>
> best regards
>
> peter
>
> >>> heartie7@... <mailto:heartie7%40hotmail.com> 4/23/2007 11:16
AM >>>
>
> Hello Everyone!
>
> I have been MIA but read your emails occasionally. I have a
question to
> ask
> of you guys. For those who have attended professional conventions
(not
> deaf/hh geared conventions like AG Bell), what has been your
experience
> with
> getting your accommodations for the conventions? I just got back
from
> an
> audiology convention (American Academy of Audiology) and walked out
> with a
> HUGE sense of disappointment in their service provision. An irony,
you
> think?
>
> Rachel Berman
>