Advocacy
Political Advocacy
Why do we need political advocacy?
About 10% of the population has a hearing loss of some degree. Because
hearing loss is invisible, organizations that provide services to disabled
groups fail to notice the needs of this group.
There is a lack of awareness of the many ways in which the lives of people
with hearing loss can be made better through accommodations: use of
technology, services, and techniques for living well with hearing loss.
What are key areas in need of political advocacy?
Emergency Planning
One of the best ways to ensure that emergency centers can communicate with
people with hearing loss is to support communications using text messaging.
Hearing Aids
There is a growing movement to include hearing aids in insurance coverage.
There is interest among tech savvy hearing aid consumers to be allowed the
means of programming their own hearing aids.
Many who are in need of hearing aids would like the choice to purchase
hearing aids over the counter.
"The bottom line is that 30 million hard of hearing, late-deafened, and oral
deaf people do NOT have access to appropriate and adequate services, because
the services that seem to be provided for them are really appropriate only
to the the roughly one percent of people with hearing loss who are Deaf."
(excerpt from
Hearing Loss Web OHLA)
Hard of Hearing Advocates
http://www.hohadvocates.org/
Job Accommodation Network
http://www.jan.wvu.edu/english/contact.htm
Hearing Loss Web
Hearing Loss Web OHLA