 “The first time I lost my hearing, I felt like it’s the end of the world for me. I lost my job, lost my friends, and contact with my family. Then I met Lois from DHC (Deaf and Hearing Connection), and she had helped me a lot. And she meets with me and we talked with Tess Crowder for the CART. Without Tess and CART, I don’t even think how Lois and I could have managed talking to each other, explaining to her how I feel and her trying to help me sort out my new life of being deaf.” Tessie Cruz * * * * * “Over the past several years, you have provided tremendous support, not only for the gala, but for the agency….and we greatly appreciate you! We look forward to every time we have the opportunity to see you and to work with you. Thank you very much." Holliday Lisowski & Julie Church * * * * * “Tess has been doing CART for the HLAA/Clearwater group for two years. Without Tess I'm sure our group would have disbanded. We all wear hearing aids and one person is deaf. She is fast, keeping up with the dialog that is taking place. Tess has so much knowledge regarding hearing loss and deafness; I find I turn to her often during the meetings for answers. CART is vital to so many at meetings, in churches, and at general functions. When asked, Tess is always there to help. She finds time to sign at her church and CARTs for many other HLAA groups...Way to go Tess.” Barbara Emmons * * * * * “Tess Crowder, RPR, CRR, CCP, CBC, is a certified CART provider who has my complete endorsement. Her goals and priorities are in tune with the communication needs of people with hearing loss in many environments where equal communication access is needed. As a certified CART provider, Tess is eminently skilled in using state of the art techniques and computer software to provide excellent speech-to-text translation in a large variety of CART environments such as meetings (large or small), conferences, presentations, courtrooms, and so on. Along with others who have various degrees of hearing loss, I have personally benefited from CART provided by Tess at Hearing Loss Association of Sun City Center (HLA-SCC) and Hearing Loss Association of Florida (HLA-FL) meetings. In closing, I would like to join the ranks of others in saying, "Thank you, Tess, for all that you do so well for people with hearing loss." Richard Herring * * * * * "A small group of us had a vision for starting a Hearing Loss Association of America Chapter in Sun City Center, Florida. Our biggest hurdle was figuring out how to caption the meetings since we had no money. But we knew there is no point in getting persons with hearing loss together unless they can understand what is being said –and no matter how good the loud speaker system is – it is never adequate for those with severe/profound hearing loss – the ones who would need our group the most. I sent out emails to a list of captioners asking for cost estimates. The costs came back - $300 to $350 plus transportation costs for each meeting. Imagine my surprise when Tess Crowder answered my email by saying she would love to caption our meetings and had just set up a foundation, Communication Access, Inc., to provide pro bono captioning for non-profit hearing loss groups! I couldn’t believe it so emailed back to confirm: “Did you mean ‘pro bono’ as in ‘free?” Tess answered right back – “Yes, isn’t that cool!” From that point on – we knew we “could do it,” and we had our first meeting in October 2007. Tess has continued to provide our Sun City Center HLA Chapter with dependable, professional captioning service – with a smile!" Shirley Nauman |