In this post, I’m going to talk about the importance of notification and as a deaf person myself, notifying deaf people is a little different than those who can hear. Obviously, hearing people set their ring tone to whatever they please to—be it a pop song or a game song like Super Mario Bros. But for us as deaf people? we rely on visual notifications.

Which mobile device has the best notification? it’s the Blackberry. It’d flash a dark red light at the corner of its form factor and is easily recognizable afar. That’s mainly why I’ve sticked with my blackberry to this day. It’s also got a strong vibration too. I have to admit that even the hot-selling iPhone doesn’t have a good notification; its vibration is rather weak at best. That’s why you’ll see many deaf people keep reaching into their pocket and try to feel the vibration or they’d just check for the sake of it and perhaps get lucky getting a new message. Changing scenes here a bit, which webmail has the best notification? it’s Gmail, bar none. It checks for new email every minute and effortlessly pops a message into your Gmail.

So, being notified visually is pretty critical to me and that’s why I’ve stayed with the Blackberry and Gmail, the best kind of notifications you can find on the market today.