- Aim: To provide high-quality information and aftercare services for people who wear hearing aids.
- Impact: We created our community-based Hear
to Help projects, which provide simple maintenance, support and advice
to new hearing aid wearers, and to the families and carers of existing
wearers. By enabling people to make better use of their aids, Hear to
Help leads to greater independence and reduces the risk of isolation.
It also plays a part in rehabilitation, befriending and equipment assessment.
We have 10 Hear to Help projects around the UK, reaching 20,000 people.
We have encouraged health professionals to recognise the value of Hear
to Help in relieving the strain on 'mainstream' audiology services by
establishing new contracts and funding for Hear to Help from four Primary
Care Trusts in England.
See our impact in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland.
- Aim: To provide equipment solutions that improve the lives of people who are deaf, hard of hearing or have tinnitus.
- Impact: We supplied more than 34,000 people with life-improving products directly and an estimated 38,000 more through third parties such as social services departments. By providing low cost high quality and evaluated products we have helped to ensure that the equipment market works better for those with hearing loss and supports consumer choice.
- Aim: To evaluate the performance and potential benefits of products and services to people who are deaf or hard of hearing.
- Impact: We evaluated more than 70 products for our membership magazine, One in Seven and for the RNID Products catalogue, Solutions, enabling people to make informed decisions about the products that can improve their lives. We placed particular emphasis on products that alert people who are deaf or hard of hearing to events in the home, including emergencies such as fire.
- Aim: To use technology to improve remote communication for people with hearing loss.
- Impact: Our new, award-winning TalkByText PC software is already being used by many home users. It allows people who are deaf or hard of hearing to experience real-time text conversations over the internet using their PC. With almost two thousand licenses sold, the business edition is being used by a growing number of companies, educational establishments and other organisations. We also responded to the falling number of traditional textphones now on the market by completing development of a modernised and easy-to-use textphone – the first new model in the UK in five years.
- Aim: To consult with people who have tinnitus to develop solutions to help relieve the symptoms of tinnitus.
- Impact: We released our range of Tune Out Tinnitus CDs – four CDs of differing relaxation sounds. As well as providing relief for people with tinnitus, they also complement the increased range of stand-alone tinnitus relaxers available from RNID Products ensuring that those with tinnitus have more choice in how to address the symptoms and improve wellbeing.