I am losing my hearing, where can I go for advice and information?
In most cases, people contact their local General Practitioner (GP) when they notice their hearing is deteriorating. A GP can refer you to an audiologist who will test your hearing. The next step is to determine if any assistive listening devices, such as hearing aids, are suitable for you. If so, the aids must be professionally fitted.

For more information about audiograms, click here.

There are several descriptions for degree of hearing losses. The most commonly used ones are:

• Partial hearing loss – This is a mild loss and most people use hearing aids to amplify sounds and rely on these aids for everyday communication.
• Severe hearing loss – In this case, most people will find they do use visual cues including lip-reading for spoken communication and often in conjunction with hearing aids. Of course, some people find sign language more effective and use this for everyday communication. Depending on the frequency and type of hearing loss, some people learn to hear sounds again with aids and use the voice telephone.
• Total/Profound hearing loss – This is where people hear nothing or the remaining/residual hearing is minimal. Often this means that the residual hearing is not enough to hear speech, particularly as speech uses a very small part of the range of sounds a human can potentially hear. Even the most powerful hearing aids will not assist in hearing speech with complete clarity. Many people with a profound hearing loss may not use hearing aids other than for detecting environmental sounds.

However, people from any of the above groups may/may not use Auslan depending on their involvement and identification with the Deaf community. This is an individual choice.

Find out more about the Deaf community:

• Deaf community
• Deaf culture
• perspectives on Deafness

There are many aids and pieces of equipment that will help a person with a hearing loss in everyday life. Talk to your audiologist, consumer groups, friends and Deaf-specific agencies to find out what is best for you. You may be interested in such things as closed captions and infra red headphones for television viewing, TTY or volume control phones for telecommunications, vibrating and visual alert alarm clocks, vibrating alarm watches and visual alert baby cry alarms. There is no direct subsidy provided by government for these pieces of equipment. However, some items such as televisions with teletext function do have part tax exemption (contact Australian Hearing for an exemption application form) and some telecommunication providers (such as Telstra and Optus) offer subsidised telecommunications equipment for eligible customers.

Organisations that provide hearing assessments and/or advice on living with a hearing loss include:

• Australian Hearing
• The Children’s Hospital Deafness Centre
• Macquarie University Audiology Clinic
• Better Hearing Australia
• Self Help for Hard of Hearing (SHHH)
• Australian Communication Exchange (ACE)
• National Relay Service (NRS)
• Media Access Australia