Hospitals and health clinics will be required by Federal and Provincial Accessibility laws to comply with creating a space that is accessible for people who are Deaf or Hard of Hearing. For more information, check out our 'Accessibility Laws' resource page above.
Accessible Hearing Solutions helps improve accessibility by providing Hospitals and Health Clinics (such as pharmacies, physiotherapy clinics, and dental clinics) with site assessments. Site assessments educate health care centers about the best ways to improve communication and understanding in locations such as registrations desks, information desks, inpatient care, meeting rooms, recreation rooms (e.g. television listening areas), retail sites, and auditoriums. Our assessments provide a written report detailing communication areas that are causing barriers for health care workers and patients and the best ways to improve accessibility. For more information, contact us at [email protected].
Providing accessible for people who are Hard of Hearing is important because hearing loss is the second leading cause of years living with disability (YLD), second only to depression. It interferes with a patient’s or family member's ability to adhere to a management plan because it can hinders the ability to engage with physicians and allied health care professionals. It is also known that hearing loss interfere with accurate testing results (e.g. performing Mini-Mental State exam on patients who have untreated hearing loss). Please see the video below, featuring Dr. Frank Lin from Johns Hopkins, detailing the health impacts of age-related hearing loss.
Solutions to reduce barriers can include personal assistive listening devices (such as a pocket talker) for patients with untreated hearing loss to use while listening to medical staff, counter loop systems, FM systems, staff training on communication strategies, closed captioning on informational videos, ASL translations for information videos, emergency notification systems, and/or alerting systems. For more information contact [email protected].
