My experience with the 2006 NCSA Convention has forever changed my perception on the importance of our Cued Speech legacy.

After being in exile from the deaf community for the most part of my life, I was invited to attend the NCSA Conference and Gala out of the blue by Jeff Majors and Simon Roffe`. After a bit of arm twisting, I decided to make arrangements to attend. I am absolutely thrilled I decided to go afterall!

Cued Speech, Dr. R. Orin Cornett, and my mother who chose Cued Speech over Sign Language, and Susan Cofer who introduced it to my mother - all impacted my life immensely and tremendously. Without it, I would be an absolute different person than I am today. I am so grateful and thankful for Cued Speech and Dr. Cornett who invented it; and to all those who stood by me with no limitations on me with my hearing loss and the value of my life.

The conference was an enriching experience for me. While I always knew in the back of my head, how important Cued Speech is as a tool to aid in language and literacy in the deaf community, I never truly realized how important it was to continue the legacy and make it grow bigger and stronger after 40 years. I was able to reunite with old cuer friends, and meet new cuer adults and kids from all over. Cued Speech has always been such a small community and I so very much want to help it grow bigger and for the legacy to continue.

I was able to experience interaction with cuers abroad from Finland, Spain, and Switzerland. It made even more of an impression on me, getting to work firsthand with these foreign deaf cuers and talking with some of their parents and to see how universal Cued Speech truly can be, with any language. It virtually shows accents and dialects from any language and any country, and even though I always knew Cued Speech was universally capable of visualizing these things, it was even more amazing to see it with my own eyes firsthand through the foreign cuers that I worked with in the teen program for the NCSA convention. I was able to help these foreign deaf cuers who are new with their english, and at the same time learn a bit about their native language and through all that, simply by using Cued Speech! It's amazing.

I am now even more motivated and determined to advocate Cued Language everywhere. I look forward to attending and participating in future Cued Language functions.