We’re Action on Hearing Loss, the largest charity working to help all those people in the UK who are deaf or suffer some form of hearing loss.

• Please install the Flash Plugin We’ve got 100 years of experience providing care and support to deaf people with additional needs.
• We give invaluable advice and practical assistance to people with hearing loss, making sure that their quality of life is not limited.
• We fund world class biomedical research into the causes of hearing loss as part of our search for a cure for deafness and tinnitus.
• We develop new technology, like listening devices and real-time text systems, to make communication easier for millions of people.
• We fight to raise awareness of the issues and injustices faced by people who have a hearing loss, and to highlight the dangers of loud music and other excessive noise.

Hearing loss can affect us all

The challenges that people with a hearing loss face can be staggering. 90% of deaf children are born to hearing parents – 80% of whom will never learn to communicate fully with their deaf child. As a result, children who are born deaf often face substantial disadvantages even before they are old enough to start school.

When children with a hearing loss reach school age, they face more and more potential problems. They’re considerably less likely to achieve top grades at GCSE, meaning that they can struggle to find a job when they leave the education system. Even before the recent economic downturn, people with a hearing loss were four times more likely to be unemployed than the average person.

The onset of hearing loss in old age is no joke either – it leaves older people feeling isolated and suffering from a loss of confidence, cut off from the world around them.