My deafness wishlist

This morning on the bus to work, I saw a friend of mine who works for O2. He’s a great guy and always listens to my O2 rants with patience and helpful suggestions. So it was fab to let him know about my recent success with contacting O2 via the press office team on Twitter.

We chatted about technology for a while and this eventually turned into useful apps for my iPhone in terms of my deafness and other things I’d like to make life easier in my Hard-of-Hearing World.

When we were talking though, my mind went quite blank, but now I’ve had a chance to think a little bit more about it, it’s made me resolve to start compiling my Deafness Wishlist – things I want changed or services I’d like to see.

I mean I know I write about them often, but perhaps if I put them all in one place, it’ll make it easier when I bump into VIPs on the bus…

So here we go:

1. Subtitles at all cinemas for more than just one movie, at one time, once a week.
2. Accessibility email addresses for all major companies so we don’t have to call.
3. Email or online booking in all doctors’ surgeries and dentists.
4. Deaf plates for bicycles – they have these in Holland and I have one, although English drivers won’t have a clue what it means.
5. Subtitled announcements in train and tube stations.
6. All tube trains to have subtitled announcements so when stuck in a tunnel, we know what’s going on – the District line already has this.
7. Subtitled options on all movies and TV shows on iTunes.
8. Subtitled on the iPhone BBC iPlayer app.
9. Prettier vibrating alarm clocks.
10. An iPhone app that converts speech to text live – so if you’re in a meeting or at a non-subtitled, play it translates it for you.
11. An internet provider that gives deaf people a discount for their internet even if they don’t take a phone line.
12. All extras on DVDs to be subtitled.
13. Better live subtitles from the BBC. Am sick of reading ‘Urine for a nice sunny day’ when the weather forecast begins.
14. An app that links my iPhone to the unhearable things in my flat – such as the fire alarm, cooker alarm, door alarm, so it’s all in one useful place.
15. Birds that tweet lower! OK, this is one for Mother Nature, but I’d love to hear a robin sing just once.
16. Deaf-aware quiz masters in pubs. Admittedly I am normally very lucky with this, but when they’re bad, they’re very, very bad.
17. Subtitled exercise DVDs! Would love, love, love this as it’s quite hard to lipread someone when you’re bobbing about on the spot.
18. Ways to alter the pitch of the warning noises in my car.
19. More subtitled comedy shows – I know the Soho Theatre did one recently, but I want to be able to see any comedian and for some tech-savvy person to work out a way to subtitle them efficiently.
20. Deaf-friendly store alarms – am sick of setting them off and being pursued down the street by security, completely unaware I’ve done anything!

And that’s just the beginning. Please add you own at the end of this list, or let me know if you know something I don’t, and let’s see how many get ticked off by the end of this year. If just one or two could be achieved, I reckon I could live without a tenor-voiced robin – for now, anyway!!

Hearing in my car

Today is Thankful Friday.

I am thankful that I finally get to see SuperCathyFragileMystic’s new house in the Wild West erm… Country – it’s called Christmas Cottage and it looks really rather cute in the pictures.

The Photographer – SCFM’s boy – and I are driving up after work in my little car. Once it gets dark, I will no longer be able to hear him and drive in a straight line at the same time on account of lipreading issues.

Don’t worry though (especially if my Ma is reading this), I will pick to do the latter not the former!

And that reminds me, I had better warn him that conversation will be sparse and that he should bring music, as the only thing in my car right now is the Glee Soundtrack and Pavlov’s Dog – an eclectic mix of pure cheese and bonkers-ness.

Poor guy – it could be a very long journey!