Advocacy
The Canadian Hard of Hearing Association - Newfoundland and Labrador is dedicated to improving the lives of the Hard of Hearing and their families in the Province. This includes championing for issues effecting the hard of hearing as a whole as well as providing support to individual clients.
Accessibility
Due to their hearing difficulty and the lack of assistive listening and signalling devices, many hard of hearing persons are often denied full use of public facilities such as museums, libraries, movie theatres, concert halls, churches, buses and planes. They may also be in danger as they may not hear the usual audible alarms that are designed for normal hearing persons. If you are a hard of hearing person, you need to ask for the availability of proper equipment so that you can hear or be warned properly. All too often, hard of hearing people do not bother to do this as they do not wish to draw attention to themselves.
The following suggestions can be implemented to greatly improve accessibility:
- Captioned movies in theatres
- Printed information being made available
- Availability of assistive listening devices
- Availability of amplified telephones or a TTY
- Installing visual fire and smoke alarm systems
- Installing adequate lighting to make speech/lipreading possible
- Training staff to be aware of and sensitive to the needs of the hearing impaired