Meet Chloe Klein: A Half-Deaf Student Dominating Zoom University

Taking college classes online is hard enough, but for freshman Chloe Klein, this adjustment was much bigger for her than the average student. Klein grew up half-deaf, unable to hear out of her right ear ever since she was five years old. At that age, her parents and teachers noticed that she was not paying attention to either of them, so her doctor recommended that she had her ears checked out. As it turned out, she was half-deaf.

“Because I was so young when I got diagnosed, a lot of my life has been trying to figure out what I may or may not be missing out on,” Klein said. “It has definitely made me more aware of my surroundings in ways I didn’t think, especially when it comes to beats in music and things like that. It has made me more aware of others in my surroundings and pushed me to break out of my shell by asking people I may not know to repeat themselves if I didn’t hear them.”

In high school, Klein had an assisted listening device, or ALD, almost like a hearing-aid in her ear, that helped her hear specifically what the teacher was saying. She could change the settings on the device so that she could only hear the teacher, not any background noise, whether that be students or not. 

Now, with all of her classes online, she has a setting that allows for live captioning on all of her live lectures. Oftentimes, though, her professors fail to turn the setting on for her. Instead, she downloads a system on her computer that basically translates everything her professors say during class in a separate window. Within 24 hours, she receives a translated recording of her lectures from a cart writer. 

“Boston University has actually been really good about accommodating me,” Klein admits. “They were able to give me the assisted listening device similar to the one I grew up using and were able to set up so much to help me, which is definitely helpful now that most of my classes have been online.”

Still, Klein feels that online classes have made it much harder for her to focus and do well. Instead of being in-person and hearing her teachers talk in front of her, she has to put in more effort to pay attention in class through the screen while also juggling with reading captions and looking back on transcribed lectures. 

Klein hopes that in-person classes return as soon as it’s safe; but, until then, she is totally dominating Zoom University. 

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• ADHD
• Boston University
• BU
• Deaf community
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