Steve Simons

Employment Advisor, Wellbeing Activity Coordinator & Volunteer Coordinator

Born profoundly deaf on my left side and with much reduced hearing in my right, I somehow slipped through the net and was brought up apart from the Deaf community. I’ve contended with communication barriers (with all the associated frustration and isolation) whilst trying to fit into the hearing world, giving me lived experience with which to empathise with other Deaf people. 

My life has been radically transformed for the better recently, in no small part thanks to Manchester Deaf Centre and the amazing Deaf peers in my daily life now.

For most of my adult life I’ve been employed in the thankless IT sector, with roles ranging through print operator, operations support, technical support, software development, systems analysis and voice and data engineering. 

I still love to tinker with technology and have my own website built with 11ty, several linux servers running my own Fediverse (Mastodon, Pixelfed, Peeertube) instances, my own Nextcloud server, and other various web services. My allegiances lie with MacOS and linux.

During my time as part of the WAITE wellbeing group my confidence, dignity and self-esteem has been greatly repaired and when I felt able, I was accepted as a volunteer in the group. Hand on heart, this is the most rewarding thing I’ve ever experienced and I was overjoyed when I was recently offered a paid role as Wellbeing Activity Project Worker alongside my amazing colleagues.