Episode 176
Did You Hear That?
Accessibility is an important issue, especially as times continue to change and we are becoming more aware of the need to make accommodations for people with disabilities. Unfortunately hearing impairment is often overlooked when accommodations are being considered, because it's an invisible disability in most cases.
Janice Lintz is the founder and CEO of Hearing Access Innovations, which is dedicated to showing businesses, entertainment venues, and government departments around the world how to grow profits by improving access to their products and facilities for an ever-increasing audience of individuals with hearing impairments.
Janice has travelled extensively and has seen varying degrees of success in accommodations being made. The vast majority of business owners feel that adding access to their venues and businesses is an unnecessary cost because the audience that will be served is quite small. In reality, there are 360 million people worldwide with hearing impairments.
(14:30) With Hearing Access Innovations, Janice is spreading the word about the spectrum of hearing loss and how to accommodate people at all points on the spectrum. She emphasizes that effective communication is needed, and it involves three parts: visual, audio, and qualified interpretation (sign language). If any of these three parts is missing, communication will not be effective. Janice's daughter developed a worksheet to help explain the interrelationship of the three parts. https://janiceslintz.files.wordpress.com/2021/10/effectivecommunicationworksheet.pdf
To demonstrate the three-prong approach and how to use the worksheet, Janice offers a summary of the US Museums' hearing access: https://janiceslintz.files.wordpress.com/2021/08/effectivecommunicationatmuseums.pdf
(21:15) How to help increase accessibility and understanding of hearing loss in general:
- take the worksheet when you're going to a new venue and ask what accommodations are in place and what the venue is going to do to ensure all 3 parts are presented
- tell your audiologist you want a telecoil in your hearing aid, or you want it activated if it's already there. They can be installed after the fact; if the audiologist says no, find another audiologist!
- Complain with a Solution - make noise and let businesses know that you want/need this access.
Please reach out to Janice through either of these links:
