Linda Medleau Jacobs is an honored veterinarian specializing in small animal dermatology. She has won numerous awards and the praise of both colleagues and students at the University of Georgia (UGA) Athens where she has been on the faculty for over 20 years.

She has an active schedule: teaching, working in clinics and conducting research (on skin diseases as well as new testing procedures), and writing and editing textbooks and journal articles. Dr. Medleau even finds time to go kayaking and skiing with her family: husband Gil Jacobs, a veterinarian cardiologist and teenage children Rachel and David .

What makes Dr. Medleau stand out in her profession is that she is one of the 70,000 Americans who are both blind and profoundly deaf. At present, her field of vision is a "dense, shadowy fog of ... five degrees," and her hearing loss is "just 10 decibels less than total deafness."

Dr. Medleau was born in Cleveland, Ohio (1953) with normal sight and hearing. While she was in the fourth grade, her hearing began to deteriorate. This regression marked the onset of Usher’s Syndrome III (a rare disorder) that wasn’t diagnosed until her teen years. For some time she was able to compensate for her impairment by sitting near the front of all her classrooms. In this way she avoided wearing a hearing aid.

Forced to spend most of the time coping with reduced auditory input, she became socially awkward, shy, and insecure. She could be at ease only when around animals. Her ninth-grade guidance counselor encouraged her to combine that rapport with her interest in biology and become a veterinarian.

While attending high school, Dr. Medleau began to have trouble seeing at night. An ophthalmologist told her she had an untreatable condition called retinitis pigmatosa that caused degeneration of her retinas. After graduation, she went to the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland. Doctors there confirmed the retinitis pigmatosa diagnosis and predicted it wouldn’t seriously affect her vision until she reached the age of 60. Unfortunately, that proved to be incorrect.

Regardless of her doctors’ dire prognoses, Dr. Medleau chose to take her counselor’s advice and work toward a life in veterinary medicine She knew she would have to contend with the disabilities of blindness and hearing impairment, but she vowed to herself she could adapt to the challenge.

Dr. Medleau attended Ohio State University and graduated with a D. V. M. degree in 1979, then served a one-year internship at Michigan State University. Surgery was out of the question because " ... people wear masks during surgery, and I wouldn’t be able to understand what they were saying" she said Looking at alternatives, her interest in animals with skin conditions presented a viable choice.

Dr. Medleau was successful in her quest for a master’s degree in immunology at the University of Georgia (1982). Next she completed a two-year residency in dermatology at the University of Pennsylvania. She then promptly returned to UGA and joined the faculty as a specialist in small-animal dermatology. In 1988 she became an associate professor; and seven years later was promoted to full professor.

She readily admits that she wouldn’t be working at all without the help of technology. It wasn’t until 1992 that she felt the need for assistive devices. By that time, her hearing aids were not doing the job. She replaced them with a small radio set. A teaching assistant would relay student questions to her through a headset.

By 1995 Dr. Medleau couldn’t read without help. Her computer was equipped with "Zoom Text" to magnify what she was working on. The next year she began studying braille. In 1998 her computer with Microsoft MS-DOS failed. Her sight and hearing had intensely diminished. She couldn’t use magnification any more because " ... it was incredibly fatiguing (and she could) ... get text large enough but ... no longer get it focused." At this point she turned to the Helen Keller Center for Deaf-Blind Youths and Adults in Sands Point, New York. An assistive technology counselor helped her look for other methods. She recommended the following:

A new computer with Microsoft Windows and JAWS for Windows speech synthesis software; Open Book to scan documents; a braille embosser; a 45-cell Braille Window braille display; Braille Note with QWERTY keyboard-- it was a portable data assistant (PDA), had a parallel port and an infra-red port, a P-MC14 slot, and built-in braille display.

Besides these devices, Dr. Medleau also depends heavily on personal assistance. While she is doing clinical work with peoples’ pets at the University Small Animal Teaching Hospital, she is accompanied on rounds by veterinarian residents, interns, and senior year students. They describe their observations and discuss the clinical history of patients.

Dr. Medleau herself examines animals with her hands, then confers with the others on likely diagnoses and possibilities for treatment. She can prescribe medication with the help of a dermatology technician.

In her clinical dermatology classes, Dr. Medleau has "turned adversity into a way to teach her students." They say she encourages them to use all of their senses–hearing, touch, and smell–as well as sight--in their examinations. Dr. Medleau was one of the first to develop problem-solving simulations to use in classroom teaching.

Some of the words used by students and colleagues to describe Dr. Medleau are: "inspiring," "supportive," "organized," "enthusiastic," "competent," "superior teacher," "innovative," "compassionate," and "approachable."

Here are a few of the awards Dr. Medleau has accumulated during a distinguished career: a Lilly Teaching Fellow; Joseph Meigs Award for Excellence in Teaching; College of Veterinary Medicine Warden Distinguished Teacher Award; Regent’s Teaching Excellence Award from the Board of Regents of the University System of Georgia; Norden Distinguished Teaching Award

Dr. Medleau has also published the text "Small Animal Dermatology: A Color Atlas and Therapeutic Guide."

"Role model" is another adjective which students apply to Dr. Medleau, and it just may be the highest compliment of them all.