Our Events are better with you.
Grandparents, Parents, children, friends. Everyone is welcome.
In Person Support Group
Friday April 4 2025 11 am—noon Pacific
Read feature article about the support group in January 2025 Vivalon newsletter.
April 4 2025
May 2 2025
June 6 2025
Vivalon Hearing Loss Support Group
First Friday from 11:00—noon Pacific.
Everyone is Welcome!
Meet Sara and HLAA Friends the first friday at Vivalon. Socialize at no-host lunch after in Cafe. Visit Vivalon.org/HearingLoss Support
Optional no-host lunch in the Cafe.
First Friday: 11—12 noon
Location:
Vivalon Healthy Aging Campus (Next to Kaiser on 3rd Street in San Rafael. Park in garages across the street. Meeting is in auditorium on the second floor. Assistive Listening available.
999 Third Street
San Rafael, CA 94901
415-456-9062
map
Support Group in Zoom
March 27 2025
April 24 2025
May 22 2025
4:00 Pacific
Tawna Cooley facilitates HOPE Support Group 4th Thursdays in Zoom..
Hope Support Group
Fourth Thursday
March 27 2025
4—5 pm Pacific in Zoom
Meeting ID 823 2973 5908
Passcode 704280
First, we listen intently to each other without commenting. After everyone has been heard, we offer tips, advice, and experiences to support each other. Everyone is welcome, people with good hearing as well as people with hearing loss. We find that after listening to each other, we become advocates for ourselves and all those with hearing loss. Thanks to our Vice-President Tawna Cooley, who uses her excellent communication skills, for facilitating this meaningful group.
Photo Gallery
Tips from the HLAA 2024 Convention in Phoenix, Arizona
Get your new button for free at any of our in-person events!
Monthly Meetings in Zoom
Meeting I.D. 865 9253 2282
Passcode 161544
2nd Thursday
April 10 2025: Presenter Margaret Downs and mathew call
After years of working as remote CART captioners, Mathew and Margaret had become keenly aware of the issues that would make or break the service. They decided to craft a device that could overcome those exact issues and couple it with the most accurate automatic speech recognition available. The result was Caption Companion.
Photo of Margaret Downs
Premier Visual Voice (PVV) was founded in May of 2012 by Margaret Downs, a legally blind certified real-time captioner. A trailblazer in the communication access profession, Margaret has dedicated her career to breaking down communication barriers. With specialized training in court reporting, captioning, audio description, and her passion for accessibility, Margaret identified a critical need for unique services within communication access. Driven by her vision of a world where everyone can effectively communicate and be understood, Margaret launched PVV with a mission to provide innovative solutions for individuals confronting hearing, vision, or language barriers. Through her leadership, PVV has had the opportunity to collaborate with multiple, diverse clients, organizations and venues. Reliability, integrity and quality has earned PVV a stellar reputation.
Photo of Mathew Call
Mathew Call’s bachelor's degree is in Sociology from 2003 but he'd also studied Spanish and lived in Central America. While working as a Spanish/English interpreter, he went back to school for a degree in American Sign Language Interpreting and later became certified. His youngest sister was born deaf so the whole family used sign language growing up. In 2010, he was introduced to voice-writing. He took it and ran with it, later becoming a certified captioner. For a decade, he worked as Director of CART and Captioning for a company his older brother started that offered a one-stop shop for all deaf/hh communication services. It was then acquired and Mathew went over with the acquisition for a period of time, after which he decided to join forces with his trusted colleague of numerous years, Margaret Downs of Premier Visual Voice.
Caption Companion
4—6 pm Pacific in Zoom
Presentation by Margaret Downs and Mathew Call
Caption Companion is a portable 8-inch tablet device with long-lasting battery that offers unlimited, fast, and accurate realtime AI captioning right out of the box. Caption Companion provides unlimited captioning. No account, no sign-up, no subscription... not even an internet connection is required. Caption Companion comes uniquely paired with a SmartMic for unprecedented accuracy and flexibility. Several other useful accessories are also included that make Caption Companion versatile in any situation.
Caption Companion is the first automatic speech recognition (ASR) product to pass the NCSP, a live captioning exam that only human captioners had thus far been able to pass. It's a much more rigorous test as it takes into account not only word-for-word accuracy but also capitalization, punctuation, and meaning. We were recently featured on This Week in Hearing where we talked a lot about how it stands out from other captioning solutions.
Nancy Rubin
Photos of people with hearing loss and their stories
May 8 2025: Presenter Nancy Rubin
4—6 pm Pacific in Zoom
Nancy’s project, Sound Advice, photos and description, will be on display at the Marin Civic Center in July for the 35th anniversary of the signing of the American with Disabilities Act!
Nancy will talk about her own hearing loss, reasons for creating this project, and what she hopes viewers will take away from it.
Questions: president@hearinglossnorthbay.org
Phone/Text 415-710-7281
Volunteer/Visit theHLAA NB Table
with informational brochures, bookmarks, buttons that say “Face Me & Speak Slowly,” and volunteers who live with hearing loss
at these Health/Senior Fairs
Tuesday April 8 at Vivalon 1—4 pm
Saturday May 3 at Fairfax Library 11:30 am—1 pm
Saturday July 12 at Senior Expo of Santa Rosa 9am—noon
March—July 2025
Library Presentations
Join us for this educational presentation about living better with hearing loss by using tips, techniques, strategies and assistive listening. This interactive slide presentation has been enjoyed by library patrons and senior living communities in Marin and Sonoma Counties. National HLAA Community Service awardee, Sara Oser, offers information and insights. Susan Feigon, a person with a cochlear implant and hearing aid will also be available at the Cloverdale meeting to host the resource table and answer questions. Event is organized by the Sonoma County Library.
Sara Oser presents at libraries in Sonoma and Marin Counties.
HLAA NB in Sonoma Valley
Saturday April 5 10:30 am
Sonoma Valley Regional Library
755 West Napa Street
Sonoma, CA 95476
HLAA NB in Sebastopol
Sunday May 25 2:00 pm
7140 Bodega Avenue
Sebastopol, CA 95472
HLAA NB at Belvedere Tiburon Library
Tuesday July 15 2025 11:30 am
See event on website here!
Touch someone.
Hearing loss is an invisible disability. Take the time to reach out to someone with hearing loss. Let them know about HLAA-NB.