You might wonder what it is like to be a deaf writer in a hearing world. When I first started working at IBM as a technical writing intern in upstate New York, one of my coworkers was deaf. She was an excellent writer and editor.
One highlight of my work day was sending and receiving emails from coworkers and customers. Some engineers preferred to communicate by email than face-to-face anyway. Also, email was the way to connect with engineers around the world and in different time zones. And a plus was that I had a record of my conversations with the engineers. Sometimes I met with the engineer in person and we wrote notes to each other. I also communicated with coworkers using instant messaging apps and video conferencing software. For meetings and classes, I used interpreters or remote captioning services.
Recently, I earned a certificate in medical writing and editing from the University of Chicago. All of my classes except one were online. I really enjoyed communicating with my classmates via the online forums and posted my homework assignments online. When we met for live sessions, I used a captioning service. I also was able to insert questions and comments via the chat box.