News And Events

Deaf chemist lets colleagues ‘hear with their eyes’

For entrepreneur Sid Ander, the silence of hearing impairment spoke persuasively of business opportunity.

Ander was a chemist for a sheepskin tanning firm when he moved to Fort Worth from New York five years ago.  One of the first things he noticed about the Metroplex was that deaf people like himself lacked one big advantage enjoyed by their Northeast counterparts.

In New York, many hearing impaired people were equipped with teletype machines, which allowed them to communicate through telephone lines without speaking, using a typewriter-like keyboard to enter messages and a display screen or printer to read them.

“I decided to go into the teletype distribution business in order to help other hearing -impaired people,” Ander said.

He made that decision two years ago.  Now, more than 1,000 unit sales later, Ander, 46, is preparing to make a career change, and become a full-time marketer of teletypes and other special devices for the hearing impaired.

He’s already becoming one of the largest such distributors in the country, operating with his wife, Barbara, our of their spacious home on Fort Worth’s southwest side.

Ander expects the teletype market to expand even more rapidly for two reasons.  One, this means of communication is being pushed by anti-discrimination legislation and, two, businesses are going to recognize that the 2 million deaf people in this country represent a powerful, largely unexploited buying force.