IBM Mainframe Forum

I know this is abit off topic but I was wondering if the are many deaf people working in a Mainframe Environment???

I'd guess that we need to better define "many". In proportion to their frequency in the general population? I peronally know of one; there are certainly others, and many people whose ability to hear I don't know.

I think this would depend greatly upon how adept the deaf person is with lip reading, what type of position he is in, etc. For example - an organisation programmer might have a lot of meetings to attend - difficult for a deaf person, a system programmer usually has a limited number of people to interact with - much easier. Is the person really deaf, or very hard of hearing (hearing aids help)? Kochler implant might be worth looking into.

mongan wrote:I think this would depend greatly upon how adept the deaf person is with lip reading, what type of position he is in, etc. For example - an organisation programmer might have a lot of meetings to attend - difficult for a deaf person, a system programmer usually has a limited number of people to interact with - much easier.

Also depends on the organization and the people around him. The man that I'm thinking of is an application SA; we see each other sometimes in the weekly software impact meetings (any given area sends a representative only if it thinks that its work will be impacted by changes). He is adept in ASL; a translator (not an employee; don't know where she comes from) comes to the meetings with him. The facilitator occasionally has to remind people to keep the side chatter down so as not to confuse the translator; otherwise this works very well. Obviously this is not a universal solution, but an example of what can be done.

Thanks for the response, I was thinking of training/education opportunities for deaf people working on mainframes!

Could you be more specific? I have friends that are very hard of hearing, know sign language, etc. So what is actually the issue here - are you hard of hearing / deaf and want to know about education, or do you want to educate, or .... ?

interframer wrote:I know this is abit off topic but I was wondering if the are many deaf people working in a Mainframe Environment???

I've met one blind guy working on z/OS, and one who needed a reader magnifying everything on screen to the size of a football field. If they can work on a mainframe, then deaf people would have absolutely no prolems.

I am not deaf - except when it suits me - but I can go for hours/days without speaking to people [yeah sad !! but works for me - always been anti-social ]
Anyway most contact is via email, IM, problem queues, especially as the industry becomes more geographically dispersed.
Being able to hear is quite far down the list of required skills.