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Internet communication originated between huge computer terminals conveying typed words to readers, but it has matured into much more. Electronic messages built on the post office mail qualities of read-only text that traveled across space, from a single sender, to one or more receivers. Electronic mail imitated the telegraph and telephone characteristics of nearly immediate delivery and the possibility of almost real-time responses. E-mail combined the brevity of a business memo with the duplication and permanent nature of photocopies.
Today, e-mail has evolved into a medium routinely used by millions worldwide as an often-preferred, home and business communications channel. It has grown beyond its predecessors’ capabilities, encompassing mobile access via wireless technology (along with cell phones), and the inclusion of photos, graphics, audio and video information. E‑mail offers unique screening options, convenient sorting, prioritizing, filing and retrieval capabilities not feasible with earlier media. Transmitting large files of data instantly with no use of paper, ink, postage, copiers, or added labor are amazing advancements.
Did You Know?
One of the most technologically influential early e-mail users was hard of hearing.
Vinton Cerf, co-developer of the Internet, has a severe hearing loss. Surrounded by the whirring fans of computers, Cerf had a hard time hearing technical information over the phone and found e-mail communication “a relief” (Myers, 2000).
Could Cerf have imagined how widespread this phenomenon would become?
E-mail is the most commonly used category of current U.S. online activities. According to the December 2008 survey by Pew Research Center, “74% of American adults use the Internet,” and 91% of those individuals report using e-mail regularly (Pew, 2009).
A significant portion of the U.S. population has hearing loss. Based on federal data and published research, Gallaudet University (2009) estimates,
If everyone who has any kind of ‘trouble’ with their hearing is included, then ... 37 to 140 out of every 1,000 people in the United States have some kind of hearing loss, with a large share being at least 65 years old.”
Since many who are hard of hearing are also over 65, they commonly experience arthritis in their fingers, or Parkinson’s hand tremors. One specific benefit of e-mail is that “typing is less painful and easier to read than unsteady handwriting” (Dugan, 2002).
Courtesy and Privacy
The noiseless quality of e-mail is a courtesy to household members sleeping nearby (Burgstahler, 2008) and co-workers in close proximity. It’s a polite alternative to cell phone calls in public places--restaurants, stores, and waiting rooms--both for keeping personal matters confidential, and for allowing forced listeners nearby to enjoy fewer distractions. This is a particular advantage for anyone who speaks with a louder-than-average volume (in person and, more often, over the phone), whether due to hearing challenges or merely an annoying habit.
E-mail affords privacy over answering machines and online voicemail that play back recorded verbal messages to all within hearing range. Message privacy can be a special challenge for those using amplified (“hearing booster”) phones, speakerphone features, or cell phones with the volume set high. E-mail offers a discreet solution for those incoming communiqués, as well as the receiver’s outgoing responses.
Triumphing Over Background Noise
E-mail enables communication in noisy environments. Unlike using cell phones, landlines and pay phones, background interference doesn’t frustrate correspondents reading or composing online messages. For anyone with hearing loss, this benefit greatly reduces stress, especially those employed in busy office environments or living with multiple children. E-mail brings freedom: there’s no more asking to repeat (Dugan, 2002), and it can be understood completely without any strain (Myers, 2000).
Archival Qualities
E-mailers have access to any correspondence they don’t delete. In business, this provides verification of precise wording used, motivating a higher standard of clarity and professionalism. Filed volleys are often valuable in solving misunderstandings. We’re able to forward previous notes as clarification--as long as we use great discretion and seek permission before passing along another’s words. In personal relationships, notes we consider “keepers” are convenient for re-reading.
The “save” feature for composed e-mail messages offers unique benefits, too. When we wait to cool off before sending emotional responses, we can review and retract words we might later regret. This is a rare asset not shared by face-to-face interaction, phoning, or even hand-written letters which might seem to be too much trouble to re-do.
Mass Mailings
A major asset of e-mail is simultaneous distribution to multiple recipients, but this frequently gets abused Those receiving prolific forwarded Internet clips face a challenge to tactfully let senders know personal limits, or just keep deleting that friendly spam. Yet, e-mail is the most time-efficient channel for advising family and friends of hospital updates, funeral arrangements, and other time-sensitive announcements. It lessens emotional drain when e-mail spares senders the need to repeat dramatic or heart-wrenching details. These advantages are magnified for hearing-impaired individuals on both ends of such communications. E-mail reduces anxiety created by the desire to pass along accurate information, and respond appropriately, when others are in distress.
Meeting Challenges
The capability of some e-mail programs, such as iCal and Outlook, to arrange meetings with multiple parties is a tremendous time saver. As users post appointments and available hours to a laptop or desktop, their blocked-out segments can be viewed (minus details) on schedulers’ computer screens. An initial invitation for a specific date and time--shown as without conflict for all--can be accepted, declined, or set as “tentative” by each person responding. Once everyone accepts the time, a single keystroke adds it to each individual’s calendar with no further reminder system required. If users have enabled alarms, they will even be prompted before the meeting begins.
Keeping in Sync
Synchronization of e-mail accounts between several hardware devices offers another organizing convenience. Several services, like Apple’s Mobile Me, use the Internet as a “cloud” of storage space for information in personal files including e-mail messages, address books, contact lists, and personalized calendars. Subscribers set up shared channels to either manually (when desired) or automatically (continuously) synchronize information between home and office desktops, laptops, iPods or iPhones. Reminder alarms can be set on any device to keep the owner on time for every appointment and task. As a bonus for those who cannot hear audible reminders, iPhones can be set to vibrate, and other devices can flash visual cues on their screens.
Quick, Convenient and Cost Efficient
E-mail boasts nearly instant delivery, round-the-clock access every day of the year, and the convenience of reading and responding at your most convenient moment (in all time zones). It eliminates “phone tag” (Dugan, 2002), and reduces disruptive phone calls (Myers, 2000). E-mail is less expensive than long-distance calls. Since managers often write their own e-mailed memos, and have staff use online calendar planning, e-mail saves secretaries’ salaries for other tasks. It lowers costs for postage, envelopes, letterhead, plain paper, copier toner, and printer cartridges. In addition, e-mail has replaced teletypewriters for many deaf TTY users.
E-mail Shortcomings
Often, by creating minor disasters, we learn when e-mail is not the best media choice. Anything a person does not want forwarded, or backed up by their employer’s computer system, should not be e-mailed (Alred, et al., 2006). Misunderstandings occur when word choice can be interpreted in more than one way. While telephone conversations between uninhibited speakers sharing a clear connection do add voice inflection, pacing, and pauses, no one can read lips over the phone.
Face-to-face meetings are far superior for immediate, interactive exchanges: personal relationship dilemmas, group brainstorming, complex issue discussions, and interviews. E-mail is inadequate for interchanges that need the enhancement of body language, facial expressions, and gestures to build rapport, rapidly modify plans or theories, or understand live demonstrations. The most personal, confidential, and cyber-sensitive messages at work are better handled “live,” behind closed doors. For the hearing challenged, opportunity to lip read and view captioned or subtitled audio media is vital.
The more informal nature of e-mail is typically viewed as less honoring to recipients than hand-written notes of thanks, condolence, and congratulations; emotionally charged announcements; love letters and poems. Mailed, printed invitations prevail for weddings, major celebrations and gatherings, in both personal and business situations. Although electronic greeting cards (e-cards) linked via e-mail offer sound and motion, they are undeliverable via servers with certain size or attachment restrictions (such as to addressees at corporations and colleges). Recipients lacking required playback software can be confounded. E-cards also convey less individual care than computer-generated (or even purchased) greeting cards hand-signed by senders.
Further Impacts: Ethics and Responsibility
For many, the importance of careful attention to word choice and diverse connotations has been heightened by the text-only, spontaneous, multiple-reader nature of e‑mail. Users must consider which thoughts--appropriate to a single reader--need to be deleted, tempered, or clarified before pressing “reply to all.” Ethical concerns have widened due to e-mail’s forwarding option and the convenience of cut-and-paste text copying. Medical and financial privacy, copyright infringements, and personal loyalties are among issues requiring closer scrutiny since the onset of widespread e-mail usage. E‑mail’s opportunity to include hyperlinks to web pages gives authors added responsibility to check sources before circulating broken links, out-of-date information, and products or content they do not wish to promote.
Conclusion and Predictions
The Center for Persons with Disabilities at Utah State University (WebAIM, 2009) claims, “The Internet is one of the best things that ever happened to people with disabilities.” I agree, and further claim e-mail is one of the best things that ever happened to people with hearing loss.
I predict, as our generation ages, experiencing more loss of hearing, e-mail will steadily supplant telephones as a top communication choice. Until a superior medium develops beyond e-mail, our offspring--who are often computer-literate from early childhood--may be more willing to socially admit hearing loss as they age, and will be quicker to embrace the advantages of e-mail. This next generation will likely witness further reduced dominance of telephones--with the exception of iPhone types that can also access e-mail.
Bibliography
Alred, Gerald J., Brusaw, Charles T., and Walter, Oliu E. Handbook of Technical Writing. (Boston, MA: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2006), 166.
Burgstahler, Sheryl, Corrigan, Bill, and Joan McCarter. "Making Distance Learning Courses Accessible to Students and Instructors With Disabilities: A Case Study." Internet & Higher Education 7, no. 3 (July 2004): 233-246. Academic Search Complete, EBSCOhost (accessed Jan. 25, 2009).
Dugan, Marcia B. Living with Hearing Loss. (Washington, D.C.: Gallaudet University Press, 2002), 128-131.
Gallaudet University. Graduate School and Professional Programs. “Demographics: Deaf.” http://gri.gallaudet.edu/Demographics/deaf-US.php (accessed Jan. 25, 2009).
Myers, David G. A Quiet World. (London: Yale University Press, 2000), 161.
Pew Research Center. “Internet Activities.” Pew Internet & American Life Project. Jan. 07, 2009.
http://www.pewinternet.org/trends/Internet_Activities_Jan_07_2009.htmWebAIM. “Introduction to Web Accessibility.” Center for Persons with Disabilities, Utah State University. http://www.webaim.org/intro/#intro (accessed Jan. 25, 2009).
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