FEATURE STORY
VA Relay
Hearing is Believing By Christy Brudin
Kathi Mestayer has lived with hereditary hearing loss since her early 40s. She uses a Virginia Relay caption phone for many of her personal and professional calls.
“H
e wants to hear my voice. He wants to hear me laugh,” explained Kathi Mestayer, who uses a captioned telephone provided by Virginia Relay to communicate with her 93-yearold father. “It’s a more meaningful type of communication when you hear someone’s voice. It’s more like you’re there with them.” Kathi, who has lived with hereditary hearing loss since her early 40s, uses Virginia Relay for most of her phone communications. Virginia Relay employs live captioning assistants combined with the latest voice recognition software to provide high-quality telephone captioning services. Users see the spoken words displayed on a screen on their phone just moments after they are said. By offering a diverse array of services, Virginia Relay enables people who are Deaf, Hard of Hearing, DeafBlind, or have difficulty speaking to communicate with anyone who uses a standard phone. Relay services are available 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, with no limit on the number or length of calls a user may make. All services and equipment are provided through state and federal programs and are delivered to qualified consumers at no cost.
Across miles and through pandemics
When Kathi talks with her father, he uses his own Relay device as well. Even with a cochlear implant, his hearing loss is profound. Using their individual captioned phones, Kathi and her father see the words of the other person displayed on a screen as they hear them. “I could not talk to my father on the phone at all without a captioning phone,” Kathi noted.
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Kathi lives in Williamsburg, Va., and her father lives in Valley Forge, Penn., so maintaining contact via the phone is important. Especially during the current COVID-19 crisis, it is not possible to visit—or to know when visiting will be an option. In fact, Kathi was able to maintain regular contact with her father using Virginia Relay even after she was diagnosed with COVID-19 and throughout her recovery at home.
Losing her hearing and finding her calling
As a young girl growing up in New Jersey, Kathi learned about hearing loss early. Her father began losing his hearing in his early 40s. “I remember him having those old-fashioned microphones that
would hang around his neck, and the hearing aids that attached to his eyeglasses,” Kathi noted. Kathi, who is one of four girls in her family, explained that she and her sisters grew accustomed to raising their voices and ensuring that their father was looking at them and listening before speaking. “All of those things you do to talk to hard of hearing people were just natural to us,” she said. Kathi attended college in New Jersey and got her first job after graduation at Prudential. When the company transferred her to Chicago, she met her husband, Mac. A physicist, he was working at the University of Chicago and was Kathi’s sister’s officemate. Her sister decided that the two needed to meet.
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