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It's wonderful that churches, schools, and business have
made themselves accessible to the visible minority of people
in wheelchairs. For less money, they can also make themselves
optimally accessible to the large but largely invisible minority
of people with hearing loss--some 28 million Americans according
to the National Institutes of Health. Of these, 23 million
have "significant hearing impairment" according
to the National Center for Health Statistics Healthy People
2000 report. Most--18 million--are 45 and over. Moreover,
their numbers are increasing with the aging of the population
and the accumulating effects of modern toxic noise.*
Alas, although most people with vision loss wear glasses,
only some 5 million Americans with hearing loss wear hearing
aids (glasses for the ears). In Britain, which has only 21
percent as many people as the USA, the National Health Service
provides hearing aids--all with telecoils--and 4.3 million
people use them, reports the UK charity, Hearing
Concern.
In most places, hard of hearing people hear the broadcast
sound, but only after it has traveled some distance from a
loudspeaker, reverberated off walls, and gotten mixed with
other room noise. Induction loop systems take sound straight
from the source and deliver it right into the listener's head.
It's as if one's head was located in the microphone, or inches
from a television's loudspeaker--without extraneous noise,
or blurring of the sound with distance from the sound source.
*Here are data on the population's
aging and the relationship of aging to extreme hearing loss.
These data indicate that the need for hearing assistance has
increased, and will increase dramatically in the years ahead.
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