#read lips

You know it’s hard

Let Me quiet, and feel to My quietness;

Your words are your thoughts, not Mine.

I am My quietness, so can you be your quietness?

It’s an elixir to your body.

  Have you read any tree’s lips to speak a word?

It’s an essence for you to feel them, not read their lips.

Have you read the sky’s lips to speak a word?

I am like them, that the world doesn’t hear Me.

  Written by Ismael Mansoor

A good friend of mine was recently featured in a blog that is hosted by one of the most amazing companies in the world: Intel. An employee by the name of Sejal Patel (pronounced 'say-gel') who joined Intel in 2008 as a part of the Staffing Marketing and Channels group, interviewed my good friend Sherry about her experience as a deaf employee. Here's a snip of the interview:

At Intel, life was different.

After I arrived at Intel two years ago as a recent college graduate (RCG), my manager and I discussed accommodations I would need to do my job as a Project / Program Manager in IT. Because I manage a virtual advisory team and is part of a staff with teammates from Malaysia and India, I would need to spend much of my time calling in meetings. A video phone was handed-me-down by a deaf employee who left Intel, but it had connectivity issues due to Intel’s network security. For the next several months, I was frustrated with obsolete equipments and text based captioning relay causing lag time in-between conversations.

My teammates were incredibly supportive by trying new things with me, such as the video conferencing rooms when they came out and web cameras on our laptops. However, the video conferencing rooms were hard to get due to their popularity and the video on web cameras was slow, so I was not able to read lips. Seven months passed before I discovered the Z video phone and after a trial period to ensure it would work over Intel’s firewall, I was hooked. The Z video phone allows me to connect to a sign language interpreter to make phone calls and participate in meetings on the bridge. I was able to do my job more efficiently, along with sign language interpreters in group meetings and training classes at Intel. It was like having my magic wand back, almost.