Sound2Sight: Dr. Joan Bolker

Dr. Joan Bolker

For more than thirty years, Joan Bolker, Ed.D., has taught and counseled writers--at Harvard, where she cofounded the Writing Center, at UMass-Boston, where she began The Language Place, and at Wellesley, Brandeis and M.I.T.'s counseling services. She is a clinical psychologist who works with many writers in her private practice, and has coached the authors of hundreds of doctoral dissertations.

About 7 years ago she started to notice that she was having trouble with her hearing. Visits to the doctor were not effective in holding off the degeneration of her abilities. She was forced to cope with a new way of dealing with the world around her. Fortunately, Dr. Bolker was always very fond of and attentive to the expressions on peoples faces. She remembers studying the way people said things and how they looked as they said them. This helped her tremendously in facing the years ahead by enabling her to pick up lip reading more quickly than she might have otherwise. She is now fluent in the art.

The only thing is that many people do not enunciate their words well, and still others hardly move their lips when they talk. Joan thought that it would be a great thing if she could just have a small handheld device which would help fill in the holes in her conversations. If and when she missed a word of phrase, without moving her eyes far from the face of the person with whom she spoke, she could quickly check to see if there was a hint as to what might just have been said. Thus was born her interest in being client for the Sound2Sight project.