Dana is also the hard of hearing representative on the Equipment Program Advisory Committee for the California Deaf and Disabled Telecommunications Program (http://www.ddtp.org). Formerly she was a member of the Deaf and Hard of Hearing Advisory Committee (DHHAC) for the California Department of Rehabilitation. She received twelve days of training on the Americans with Disabilities Act from the Disability Rights and Education Defense Fund (http://www.dredf.org) and participated in an SHHH Leadership Conference.
Dana served on the national board of trustees for SHHH from 1994 to 1997. She held various positions on the state level in California, including Vice President, Northern California Chapter Coordinator, and Special Projects Coordinator. Presently she maintains the web site for SHHH-California and email alerts lists for Californians and Bay Area residents with hearing loss.
Dana enjoys learning about technological innovations and towards this end has created another email alert list to inform people with hearing loss of new products and services. For more information, please visit her web site, listed below.
Single, Dana shares her residence with Cloudy, a gorgeous silverpoint Persian with green eyes adopted from the Humane Society. She enjoys playing volleyball and surfing the Internet.
The hearing loss appears to be fairly stable. The cause of the hearing loss is not known.
Outside the home, Dana often uses the SoundWizard with a neck loop and its directional microphone in noisy situations such as parties or restaurants, or an FM or infrared system along with lipreading to understand lectures. She attends open-captioned movies, bypassing other movies without captions or subtitles. She also uses a Nokia 6162 cell phone with a vibrating battery and short messaging service (SMS).