Shira Ben-Hur's Blog

Finding Shira Ben-Hur’s blog was for me like finding at last a distant relative in the world of blogs. Before seeing her blog, I saw no blogs of Israeli hearing impaired persons. There is an important difference – she lost her hearing several years after having acquired speech and having been acclimated in the world of the hearing, while I am deaf since birth.

One thing is painful for me (in an egoistical way): I had to wait until she wrote it in her blog in order to know her story, even though I knew her from Bekol. She was in a group of activists, which excluded me because I was “too deaf” for them, even though I was involved with Bekol even before it was officially registered as an amuta.

Author: Omer Zak

I am deaf since birth. I played with big computers which eat punched cards and spew out printouts since age 12. Ever since they became available, I work and play with desktop size computers which eat keyboard keypresses and spew out display pixels. Among other things, I developed software which helped the deaf in Israel use the telephone network, by means of home computers equipped with modems. Several years later, I developed Hebrew localizations for some cellular phones, which helped the deaf in Israel utilize the cellular phone networks. I am interested in entrepreneurship, Science Fiction and making the world more accessible to people with disabilities.