Hi -
I am self employed and work at home nowadays -
http://www.rejtech.com (Still being designed. Although self employed since 1998, and still in my twenties, I've been giving my personal website at
http://www.marky.com and only recently decided to have a separate corporate website.)
It is a lot of work, but thanks to the Internet, it is a very viable option for the deaf now. It is not easy but it is not impossible. You really have to get your name known in the industry.
It does help that I have the following:
(1) Active participant in a hobby forum that was later to be my line of work. (7500 posts at
http://www.avsforum.com)
(2) Mentioned in 5 articles over 2 years in related industry magazines
(3) Programmer of 1 industry-related open source project
(4) Prior self employment experience getting work through traditional IT consulting agencies
(5) Travel to two industry shows a year (CES and CEDIA) to meet people
(6) Being able to be a jack-of-all-trades (at first, at least)
(7) Being addicted to the field of work (that was initially only a hobby)
(8) Have over 10 years in many different highly-skilled tasks
As long as you're just one person then you probably almost never have to talk on the phone .... so it is possible for a mute guy to be self employed and working at home and still have a full time income. The bigger difficulties come in when you are trying to expand - now you suddenly need skills to recruit people, interview people for contracting or employment, maybe make a bunch of phone calls, and whatnot. And if I have people here in person, then suddenly, I have to manage people and as a deaf person, that would be extremely difficult.
Fortunately (or unfortunately) I have too much work to be able to accept by myself -- I would very much like to expand (hire employees someday) but I am having extreme difficulty overcoming hurdles such as being able to place many voice telephone calls in a short period, and accept them. I can't talk clearly enough for people to understand what I am saying.
I keep an eye on new technology. I now use a Blackberry pager for my business needs, and it is really helpful for my business. There's email, web, fax, pager, operator dispatch services, online relay services, instant messaging on AIM/ICQ/MSN/Y using Trillian, and many other present technologies for the deaf, which I presently utilize to conduct my business. I am anticipating newer technologies to improve things further. The CapTel service (150 word per minute captioning!) sound exactly what I need, except for the disadvantage in that my voice is not good enough for the receiver to always understand. If realtime computer synthesis can be added to CapTel for outgoing speech, that might solve the problem for me. I am profoundly deaf and my speech is about 50% unintelligible to a stranger (i.e. a new client). It's also quite possible that cochlear implants may eventually be suitable for me, but that itself is a pretty tough call in itself too. (All my clients for business, are hearing)
If any deaf self-employed veterans would like to give me some advice about communications and being vastly more efficient to the point of being able to expand....drop me an email or a private message. I want to figure out how to handle dozens of clients per year eventually, some of them simultaneously.
For those who ask what I do -- I do user interface design for embedded home theater and other entertainment electronics devices. (i.e. on-screen menus for a settop box, skins-rendering software for a video player, etc.). It sure beats working in a cubicle at some boring I.T. firm. But it is not easy! It is far from simple work.
Thanks,
Mark Rejhon (Rejhon Technologies Inc.)