[Marmalite]

Originally Posted by anne666

He is far from 80% deaf wearing hearing aids. Do you know anything about this subject ?????

Clearly you do not!!!

He wears hearing aids, which are probably digital. These are far better than the older analogue aids which just amplified sound.

With digital aids background noise is reduced considerably, but it is still a problem as they cannot cut it out completely. All hearing aids work best when a person is having a one-on-one conversation in a quiet area (they usually have a range of just over a metre - about 1.5 I think is the most). Being in a room with a lot of people all talking over everyone or even the wind will make conversations extremely difficult to hear and it will be exhausting.

Shouting will also hinder hearing aids mainly because peoples voices distort when they shout which makes it harder to hear words correctly and it can be painful to someone who wears the aids.

Even with the help of hearing aids, someone with Sam's loss of hearing will have a lot to contend with and there were very few HM's who actually took the time to consider this. I was not surprised at all that he felt isolated and upset that people did not consider this (Mrs Jackie Travis!) and just brushed him off.

You may not think so, but he has opened a door for many people who may feel like their hearing disability limits them to what they can do in life and for that he is a very worthy winner!