At the Disability Expo in Adelaide Australia, last week a Cochlear Implantee brought along her Hearing Dog. I asked her why, since she can now hear very well, did she need a hearing dog.

I meet many people and they often say to me I am ‘lucky’ because I lost my hearing and not my vision. They tell me it would be far easier to live with deafness than blindness. I’ve often wondered why they should think this when the issues of being deaf are complex.

With one in six people having some form of deafness and even more as we age it means that almost every family or households are touched by deafness. This is a true story about how one family had been affected by deafness.

Finding the right Assistive Listening Device can be a minefield. It is regularly seen as ‘too hard’. As a result so many people don’t even ask for help. Sometimes just knowing there are devices which can help is a giant leap in finding solutions for you.

Hearing loss for Australian Indigenous peoples is a major health issue. It is a disease of poverty, frequently left untreated, with at least 40% of their children affected. Yet, sadly it’s a treatable condition and if treated would give these children a much greater chance in life.

Statistics show that people with a hearing loss on average are more likely to be unemployed, under employed or paid less than their hearing counterparts. However with just a little thought and consideration people with a hearing loss are productive employees.

Hearing people take noise granted and often tell us they find sound annoying. But deafened people, particularly those deafened after they have had hearing, miss noise – even the noise hearing people choose to ignore. For those who have regained hearing - Noise is Beautiful.

Do deaf children benefit from having a Cochlear implant and if so how? Does it give them a better future, improved opportunity for education and are there social benefits?

As late as the mid-20th century children with a hearing loss were often misdiagnosed and parents were told they had a mental deficiency. Research has found that children must receive stimulation to the auditory nerves during the early formative years.

Communication is the very basis of our existence. Without communication we cannot interact with our peers, we cannot learn language and at a very basic level we cannot even think.