JEN: Hi, I'm Jennifer Schuck, the chair
of the Global Alliance of Speech-to-Text
Captioning.
Today, I'd like to introduce you to
one of our Directors, Ron Drach.
Ron, can you tell us a little bit about
your hearing loss journey and
how you use captions?
RON: Well, it's interesting,
I lost my hearing late in life.
I was wounded in Vietnam in 1967,
which resulted in some other disabilities.
Basically, I stepped on a booby trap,
which was today's equivalent of an IED.
That was in 1967.
I didn't start losing my hearing
until 1998, 31 years later.
And I wasn't really sure why I was
starting to lose my hearing.
I also developed at that time
Meniere's syndrome.
And people had told me that Meniere's
will cause deafness.
Other people told me it's suspected,
but there's no real strong evidence
to that effect.
I met somebody who had severe Meniere's,
and she was pretty deaf.
I don't know, but the VA recognized it
as being due to acoustical trauma
because of the explosion
when I stepped on the booby trap.
It obviously made a big, loud noise.
But it was just kind of ironic that
it took 31 years before the hearing
started to go on me.
But it is what it is.
And initially, I was in denial,
like a lot of people that I know today,
veterans that I've met and others
who have lost hearing or partial hearing,
that are in denial.
I was in denial.
My wife was putting up with me,
and the 'selective hearing' accusations
and whatnot.
But then a friend of mine,
we were going on a trip,
the three of us, and it was a weekend trip
somewhere in southern Virginia.
And I was having a hard time.
And he said, "When are you going to go
to the VA and get hearing aids?"
And I said, "I don't know.
One of these days."
So he actually picked up the phone
and called the VA hospital director
and made an appointment for me.
So he sort of nudged me in there.
And it took me a while to really
get into the hearing aids.
I started with one, and I had
fairly good hearing in my left ear.
But I needed the hearing aid in the right.
Then eventually, both of them went.
And so now, without my hearing aids,
I can hear virtually nothing.
And even with my hearing aids,
I don't do very well.
JEN: Well, I do want to say thank you
very much for your service, and
I'm glad that you are here with us today
and sharing your story with us.
Because it's not an unfamiliar or
an uncommon story among our veterans.
And so thank you for sharing that with us.
Why did you want to be on the board
of the Global Alliance?
RON: Well, I started losing my hearing
in 1998, and it progressed to the point
that I needed both hearing aids --
or hearing aids for both ears.
Then, as the hearing got worse,
it was not only the audio,
it was the word discrimination.
So even today, my bigger problem
is understanding words,
as opposed to hearing.
I was on a Zoom call yesterday,
and I could hear all the talking,
but I couldn't understand hardly anything.
I couldn't even put it in context,
it was so bad, and there was no captioning.
It was really a waste of time for me
to be on that call yesterday.
But I did get filled in on the gist of it.
So when I got to the point of where
I was really having a problem,
I got involved with another organization
that's involved with telephone captioning,
and that really kind of got me
on the stream of becoming more
advocacy-oriented as a consumer.
And my background is advocacy in
veterans' issues and veterans' benefits,
for 50 years and plus.
So, I started thinking about it.
Then when I heard -- I'd been active
with the other organization
as a consultant,
and I forget exactly how I saw.
There was a post somewhere
that the Global Alliance was looking for
board members.
So I said, Well, I don't know whether
they'd want me on there or not.
I don't have any background,
other than the advocacy part,
and the fact that I'm a consumer
of captioning and having a hearing loss.
And I rely very strongly on captioning.
So I thought that hopefully,
if I was selected to be on the board,
I could do something to help the board out
and help the organization out
going forward,
and see what happens from there.
And fortunately for me, you all selected me.
So here I am.
JEN: Well, I am super grateful that
you responded to our call for Directors,
because it is really important
to have your voice as a consumer.
I know what's possible from a
professional point of view,
but it's really your voice as the consumer
of what you need to see
and what you want to see
that makes it really important
as we go forward and do our work.
And you talked about the word discrimination.
I think there is a lot of advocacy that
needs to be done in that regard,
but hearing loss isn't just about
talking louder.
There is more to it than that.
And so, as we move forward with
the Global Alliance, there are a lot of
areas that we need to tackle.
And so we appreciate your working
with us and moving our mission forward.
So to that end, what would you like
to see the Global Alliance do
in the next year?
RON: Well, the organization,
as you well know,
as being one of the founders,
that's about 2 years old now,
and I know we don't have a staff,
which is really a negative going into it,
obviously.
Because there are things that need to
be done on a daily basis, and so far,
you all, you and the other board members,
have been very active in doing
what needs to be done to get us
organized and get us moving.
But without a day-to-day CEO
and other staff to go after programs
and services, there's not a whole lot
that we can continue to do
until we get that into place.
So what I'd like to see, obviously,
is the ability for the organization to grow,
which obviously means fundraising,
new membership, sponsorship;
whatever revenue streams that we can
identify and take advantage of,
so that at some point,
hopefully within the next year,
we'll be able to hire, if nothing else,
at least a part-time staff person
to help run the organization.
Because I think there's so much to do.
And it's interesting, because up until
about, I'd say, six, eight months ago,
you didn't see or hear much
on the internet or on social media
about hearing loss and captioning.
But I'm seeing more and more of it.
We had a call last week about the
Education Committee, and we were
talking about telephone captioning.
Well, I did a very informal survey
watching TV.
I don't watch a lot of live TV.
We record a lot of programs
and then watch them later.
But I was going to take notes
on commercials, because a lot of
the TV programming is captioned --
most of it's captioned --
but the commercials,
for the most part, are not.
Well, during one commercial break,
there was like, I don't know,
maybe five or six advertisers, and
I started writing down the ones
that had captioning.
And I said, Whoa, there's more
that are captioned than are not.
I should write down the ones
that aren't captioned.
I hadn't been that aware of it,
because I usually don't watch commercials.
I fast-forward them if I can,
or I just ignore them.
So it was encouraging to see.
And we're talking some big, big
advertisers, not just something local.
But some big corporations are into it.
So that's encouraging.
JEN: I feel like every time we have
a conversation, there are more ideas --
we come up with a longer to-do list.
Like you said, we need staff.
We need manpower to be able
to support all of these.
We are not short on ideas.
We are just short on ways to get them
implemented with the manpower that we need.
What are some of the strengths of the
Global Alliance, and what would you say
are the calls to action for people
who would watch this?
RON: Well, I think the strengths of the Alliance
are the existing and the Founding Members
who had the vision to get this organized
and to put their time and their
blood, sweat, and tears into
putting it together and doing all the
volunteer work to make it as successful
as it is right now.
And again, we have to temper that with
the idea that this is all volunteer.
And I shouldn't say temper it.
It's actually to your credit for the work
you all have done on doing this
and getting us to where we are today.
So I think the strength is in the vision.
Like you said, we're not short on ideas.
It's very easy to become stagnant if
people are just sitting back,
waiting for somebody else to,
Hey, let's do this, or,
What do you think about this?
As they say, it takes a village.
And I think the board is a village.
The calls that I've been on,
the things that we've done in the
last year or so that I've been a member,
have all been interactive.
It's not been one person speaking.
It's been one person talking,
and then everybody following up
and having a discussion.
And it's never been a one-way discussion.
It's been a group discussion.
And I've been on, and I'm still on
several boards, and luckily and
fortunately, most of the boards that I'm on
are like that.
But occasionally, you get a board or an
organization where you have one or two
people that do all the speaking,
because the other members are -- either
they're bashful or they just don't know
how to respond or whatever.
But it's exciting to be on a board
that has so many thoughtful and
knowledgeable and passionate people
that are into this.
JEN: Well, you hit the nail on the head.
I am super proud of what we've done
to this point, and I do think we have
a fantastic board.
It is comprised of all facets of the
industry, and I think together we can go
forward and make a huge difference.
I really want to thank you again
for your service to our country.
And thank you again for your service
to the Global Alliance, and
for taking the time here today.
I hope everybody learned just a
little bit more about you and
what the Global Alliance stands for.
So thank you very much, Ron.
We'll be in touch about that long to-do list.
RON: Thank you very much, Jen.
Appreciate it. You have a good day.
JEN: You too.