Who Are We? And What Does Late-Deafened Mean?
Lost: My hearing Found: A family
ALDA members: I. King Jordan (ALDA past president), Rebecca Herr (ALDA-Boulder founder), Sherri Collins, Jody Adelman, Bill Graham (ALDA co-founder), and Janet Roberts
Recent Projects
About ALDA
ALDA, Inc., the Association of Late Deafened Adults, is a national nonprofit consumer advocacy and support organization. The mission of ALDA is to support the empowerment of deafened people. Late-Deafened Adults
are people who have lost the ability to understand speech with or without
hearing aids after they acquired spoken language. We are committed to promoting a support network and a sense of belonging by sharing our
unique and common experiences, and challenges and coping strategies
to help each other find practical solutions and emotional support. ALDA
works with other organizations and service providers for our common
good. ALDA, Inc. is a 501(c)(3) tax-exempt nonprofit organization.
home modifications, and captioning services. Our deafness may have been the result of heredity, accident, illness, drugs, surgery, or "causes unknown." Our hearing loss may have occurred suddenly or may have progressively deteriorated over time. Regardless of the cause or rapidity of hearing loss, deafened adults share the cultural experience of having been raised in the hearing community, and having "become deaf" rather than being "born" deaf.
One of ALDA's most significant contributions is adding friendships & social activities back into the lives of people who have lost their hearing. In ALDA,
we find people who share similar experiences and work together to find solutions to the everyday challenges of living with acquired hearing loss.
When ALDA members get together, communication barriers disappear. Through local chapters, community forums, and our annual conference
(the legendary ALDAcon), friendships are formed that feel like family.
How we communicate
ALDA's philosophy about communication can be summed up in just two words: WHATEVER WORKS ! We believe that there is no "right" or "wrong" way to
achieve effective communication, only
that different methods work best for different people.
Choosing how to
understand and
be understood by
others depends
on many factors.
They include the degree of hearing loss
of each person involved, their individual opportunities to find, learn, and practice various options, and what is probably
most important: personal preference.
For meetings, we have live captioning (CART, or Communication Access Real-time Translation) or interpreters. We use
a lot of visual materials. To keep in touch, we use various technologies: email, text, chat apps & FaceTime, captioned or amplified phones, smartphone apps, videophones, social media, and online options. For chatting in person, we get creative and something always works.
Late-deafened adults are people who were not born deaf, but became deaf after they developed language skills. We use visual cues to understand speech, and cannot rely on
our hearing for receptive communication. Instead, deafened people depend on visual modes, such as speech-reading,
sign language, captions, or reading text. We use a range
of technology: hearing aids, implants, listening devices, amplified or captioned phones, videophones, text, email,