The Australian Open Tennis Grand Slam is on and it’s great to watch the players as they stretch themselves to the limits aiming for the ‘crown’. But it isn’t always so nice to hear them as they play.

More and more people are requiring and have access to hearing aids. What are the reasons behind this increase?

In an earlier article I looked at how going deaf impacted on our education? The main reason is because language is incredibly difficult to acquire if you can’t hear and without language it’s especially hard to participate in school or university. So does having a cochlear implant help?

Deafness does cause us to rethink. Many of us have had to change careers or accept work below our level of capability. It adds to the distress and isolation which hearing loss causes us.

The biggest reason deaf or hard of hearing children don’t get a good education is because they have greater difficulty in developing language. The result of pour linguistic skills is to seem unintelligent and sometimes downright stupid.

Cochlear's recent 30th year celebration started me wondering how many implantees there are and where they are.

Sometimes, because of your deafness it may seem very difficult to get through the round of parties and functions that come with the New Year.

While the cochlear implant was ground breaking in 1978, it still had a long way to go before it could be a commercial product. By 1982 the product was small enough to be portable, the Cochlear company was born and Graham Carrick became the first recipient of the commercial implant.

I am amazed I can hear, will never stop listening and will never give my processors back, and I always choose to wear them, there are some frustrations at the solutions they provide. Sometimes this is a small price to pay for normal hearing but other times it seems too high a price.

Recently I went to the movies to trial the latest close captioning system available in our area.