Written by H.M. Cauley
(Atlanta Journal-Constitution, published January 4, 2007)
Like most young people, Nikita Allen is an expert at text-messaging. It's her main form of communication to family, friends and co-workers.
For the College Park woman, who has been deaf since she was a child, her Sidekick cellphone is the link between the hearing world and her own. And it has proved to be an invaluable resource on her job in the kitchen at the Renaissance Concourse Hotel near the airport.
But it wasn't a cellphone or her ability to sign that got Allen a job. It was the connections she made through the Bridges program, run by the Marriott Foundation for People with Disabilities. Bridges links high school seniors with employers.
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