Reference no: EM133224552

Is there anyone who has touched your life who is hard of hearing or profoundly deaf? If so, what has this disability meant in that person's life?

For example, my mother has become hard of hearing as she has grown older. What this has done is isolate her. Headphones help her listen to the TV, so she can still enjoy that. She also has hearing aids, but they wear out after a few years and they're expensive to replace ($4,000 - $6,000 when working with an audiologist), especially for seniors on a fixed income. Plus, they basically amplify sound, which means that sitting in a room of people who are conversing is severely uncomfortable for her, because she has trouble distinguishing the speech of someone who is trying to speak to her with all the background noise present. Speaking one-on-one is okay, but only if other sounds in the room are limited. (It means, for example, when we're in the car together that the radio is off and that she no longer attends church.) I now accompany her to doctor appointments, because she just can't hear a lot of what people are saying to her.

Is there any product or technology that you wish someone would invent that could help that person? Even if you don't have someone in your life with hearing loss, can you imagine a product or service that might help people with this disability?