Clair: I've been wearing hearing aids now for over 50 years. The first ones were the old-fashioned ones. Big batteries, you know, the big round batteries. There were two of them which filled your pocket. Then you had the wires from it under your coat or tucked in here and up around, and you had a control box that you pinned on the inside of your jacket and again, wires up round here. But I thought it was marvellous at first – it was better to hear with stuff like this.
I didn't really know I was deaf until I was at school and then it became more obvious, you know? If I didn't hear what a teacher said I believe they mentioned it to my parents in the end, you know, that I should be checked for deafness and that was where it was sort of put down.
I was fortunate in that I wasn't profoundly deaf, you know? If I was almost totally deaf I would have had to gone to special schooling somewhere but my hearing was enough if I sat in the front of the class – I was usually made to sit in the front row of desks – I usually got by all right.
I lived in a village just outside of Bristol and a woman there, a deaf woman, started up a lipreading class and I went along to it just as a matter of interest. It should be funded – I think classes like this should be encouraged. The people there were obviously middle aged people – people who claimed their hearing was becoming impaired, you know, as they grew older, and they had need of these classes.
Life membership to me is to be able to assist the RNID in their aims to further the cause of deaf people and to learn about the latest innovations – telephones, hearing aids, mobile phones – all this sort of thing. This, to me, is what I find the greatest benefit. I've felt that RNID are the only people with any weight who are going to push the needs of deaf people, but particularly in the needs of, or in the realm rather, of medical science.
I would say the only way we are going to beat deafness in the end is with electronic hearing aids, implants or this sort of thing. I'm all for it.