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.