I have terrible hearing trouble. I have unwittingly helped to invent and refine a type of music that makes its principal proponents deaf.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
I'm not a deaf musician. I'm a musician who happens to be deaf.
I have serious hearing loss. I'm challenged if I don't have my hearing aids in.
It's not really that I've been an advocate for hearing aids for a long time, it's just that I've been losing my hearing for a long time! So it's actually very important for me because I'm actually hearing impaired and I simply want to hear better!
In the deaf community, in order to play a role of someone with a hearing loss... you have to have hearing loss.
One of the things I did when I was in New York, which has a wonderful deaf community, is I have worked on making Broadway more accessible to deaf people.
But as far as my work is concerned, I see no impediment, and various advantages, to being deaf.
I like to say that the greatest handicap of deafness does not lie in the ear, it lies in the mind. I hope that through my example, such as my role on 'The West Wing,' I can help change attitudes on deafness and prove we can really do everything... except hear.
Nothing is going to improve my hearing. I've only got to prevent it from getting worse.
I placed over a thousand deaf people in jobs throughout my career working for the deaf.
I was the first spokesperson for the Better Hearing Institute in Washington. And that's the message we tried to send out - there is hearing help out there, and the technology and options are amazing.