Are You Hearing Comfortably?
I am passionate about encouraging more hard of hearing people (there are 10 million people with hearing loss in the UK) to try hearing aids, and about communicating with the hearing aid industry about customers’ needs.
A recent article I wrote online is from 2019. This is on HVY Journalists, a blogging site for writers. It is available here
Hearing Aid Success
I first acquired a programmable, In The Ear (ITE) hearing aid with a directional microphone in the year 2000 and it changed my life. Before the age of 30, I couldn’t hear what people were saying and tended to get excluded from places because my speech was quite slurred. My hearing aid quickly corrected these problems.
Sound Quality
In 2000, programmable hearing aids were still analogue and the sound was fantastic, even if the hearing aids didn’t have as much power as digital ones do today. To imagine this, think of the difference between a vinyl record and a CD that you can hear in terms of sound quality. The band width of sound frequencies is wider in the analogue hearing aid then the digital one, which gives a fuller, less reproduced sound.
How Fit is Your Hearing Aid?
It can take months to buy a hearing aid and this is partly because many people and audiologists don’t know how much benefit to expect from a hearing aid. The technology is much more advanced than the fitting process and yet the industry still focuses on manufacturing and not on satisfying customers.
If you would like to read articles I have written about hearing aids, please follow this link to see the publications listed below:
Publications
- ENT News – the trade publication for the audiology sector. This article can be downloaded as PDF to read.
- Article in local London newspaper on purchasing private hearing aids. This can be downloaded from Scribd
- The Hearing Times. This article contains an interview with a hard of hearing audiologist who wears a hearing aid.
- HVY Journalists article mentioned above from 2019.
A collection of articles on hearing loss is on my Scribd page, with articles in the publications mentioned above, here, including one in the Arberry Profile from 2005, which may be hard to read.
To make them easier to read, I found the original text for 3 so made them into blogs.
Do Advances in Hearing Aid Technologies recognise the needs of the Consumer
Hearing Aid Audiologists with First Hand Experience with Hearing Loss
Empowering Customers With Consumer Knowledge About Hearing Aids
Hearing Times interviews with Deaf artists
Between 2010 and 2011, I was commissioned to write 5 articles for the Hearing Times. It is free to subscribe to access to the latest issue and archives of the Hearing Times online.
Here is a visual guide to some of the articles I’ve written about hearing aids for the consumer
Sophie Sweatman 