Hearing Aids: A Social Perspective
There are literally millions of people in the U.S. who could benefit greatly by wearing hearing aids. Many of us openly choose to miss the voices of our grandchildren, can’t understand words on the television and spend most conversations asking people to repeat what they said. The most often used word in our vocabulary is “What?”. Our hearing aid is our (unlucky) spouse.
Why does this happen? Why would a normal person like me who takes reasonably good care of health issues ignore the obvious solution to a nagging issue that occurs every waking hour of his or her life?
The answer, sadly enough, is stigma. We (I include my former self) don’t have to explain why. It might be because we think it makes us look old, we’ve finally crossed a bridge and can’t go back. Or it might be as one VANISH user states that “he’s a school teacher and wants to keep his disabilities to himself”. Or another legal professional who wants people to look her in the eye and not be distracted by her hearing aid tubes. Or children who get teased and made to feel "different" by their classmates. It’s not important why, it’s just a fact and that’s that!
The relatively new behind the ear hearing aids have been a godsend to the hard of hearing. They are amazingly effective, produce very little, if any, feedback and the main unit is hard to see as it’s tucked behind the ear. The only noticeable feature is the shiny plastic hearing aid tube that carries sound from the case behind the ear to the ear canal.
Everyone who doesn’t wear hearing aids scoffs at those who complain about the visibility of these tubes. One side reassures you can barely see them, and the other compares them to telephone poles. Only one side counts in this argument - your side.
And this is the reason why we have VANISH.
It’s only fair, reasonable and just that those who see a flaw in a product, endeavor to resolve it. It’s also critical that the solution embraces all ethnicities, all skin colors, young and old, male and female. The overriding consideration in the development of VANISH was the goal to eliminate “stigma” as a reason the hard of hearing have used to reject hearing help.
The majority of the research and development expense with VANISH was to create a product that was foolproof. It had to be easy to apply with little effort, safe and permanent. It had to produce a predictable consistent result every time. We ran hundreds of tests to develop colors that would include every ethnicity on the planet. Yet we had to make sure the colors were fluid enough that getting close would be acceptable to the human eye. (See How VANISH came to be)
The biggest challenge in blending for camouflage is the balance of opacity with the need for translucence. Too much color and not enough transparency produces a less than acceptable product. We finally reached a perfect combination of these elements.
Thousands of people in locations throughout the world have applied VANISH to their hearing aid tubes. To date, we have never heard from anyone who was less than thrilled with their results. We developed VANISH because we just knew my hearing aids could be less noticeable. We think you will be happy to find that yours can be too.
If you want to learn more about VANISH from outside sources go to Disappearing Receiver Tube - Hearing Review, also Hearing Aid Stigma-Revisted and be sure to read the Testimonials.