Public Services People Hearing Impaired Businesses Hearing Agencies Provide

The "Americans with Disabilities Act" requires that people with "disabilities" (people with a medical condition that reduces their ability to perform as others do) must have an equal opportunity to participate in and benefit from public services. Because hearing loss is considered a disability, this means that there are many public services to help the hearing-impaired. These "accommodations" (ways that services are altered to be useful to people with particular conditions) are required for businesses of a particular size if those accommodations do not "place an undue burden" (result in extreme expenses or effort) on the business.

For example, if businesses and government agencies normally provide information "orally" (using spoken words), they must be able to provide the same information "in a written form" (in writing) for the hearing-impaired. They must have "adequate" (enough; appropriate) "signage" (signs) for hearing-impaired individuals to find what they are looking for. And any "auditory" (related to sound) alarms, such as "fire alarms" (loud sounds and flashing lights that warn people to leave a building when there is a fire), must be "complemented by" (accompanied by; used in conjunction with) "flashing" (with a light turning on and off repeatedly) alarms for the hearing-impaired.

Businesses and agencies many need to accept calls made through a "relay service," sometimes called "Teletype" ("TTY") or Telecommunication Device for the Deaf" ("TDD"), which is a system that allows the "deaf person" (a person who cannot hear) to type a message so that the TTY worker reads it over the phone, and when that non-hearing-impaired person relies orally, the TTY worker types the message for the deaf person to read.