Essentially, there is a little box on top of the monitor that watches the headset I'm wearing. Wherever I look or point my head, the mouse pointer will follow on the screen. There's a puff switch coming down from the headset to my mouth, and when I puff into that it operates the click. The mouse plugs into the same port on the computer as a standard mouse and is treated the same way by the computer. Employees with hearing impairments use a range of solutions based on the extent of their deafness.
Accommodations can range from technical devices to personal interpreters.
For smaller meetings, Graham typically uses the FM system, where the microphone is passed from speaker to speaker. But not all solutions are high-tech. A person has to have the koosh ball in his or her hand before speaking. We've found that just the act of throwing the koosh ball around to one another can loosen up a meeting. In addition, for some meetings Graham has been using MSN Instant Messenger effectively, as well as private chat rooms on the MSN Communities Web site.