Advocacy
Advocacy means telling people what you want.
Legislation on the national level: Hearing Aid Tax Credit Act
Some history:
Hearing Aid Tax Credit reintroduced in House July 2007 and still hasn’t passed. (Jim Ryun originally introduced the idea in 2003) Reps. Carolyn McCarthy (D-New York) and Vernon Ehlers (R-Michigan) with 21 House members introduced H.R. 2329, the Hearing Aid Assistance Tax Credit Act, which would provide a tax credit of $500 per hearing aid every five years for seniors 55 and older and for dependents of taxpayers. Although H.R. 2329 will not cover the entire cost of hearing aids, the tax credit provides some financial relief to those in need of the devices. The bill was introduced in May during Better Hearing and Speech Month. Ten million older Americans have age-related hearing loss. A study by the National Council on Aging shows that, left untreated, hearing loss often results in distorted communication, isolation, withdrawal, depression, anger, and severely reduced overall psychological health, in addition to an average loss of income per household of up to $12,000 per year. Details at Hearing Loss Association and thomas.loc.gov.
Meanwhile, in the Senate, Norm Coleman, who doggedly introduced the bill in the Senate, was defeated. Our Massachusetts senators have never become co-sponsors. Bills won’t pass without co-sponsors. Contact your legislators and ask them to become co-sponsors!
There is a huge amount of information on insurance and other topics in the Advocacy section of the Hearing Loss Association of America website.
Movie Theaters
There are over 60 movie theaters on the Cape. The Cape Cinema in Dennis sometimes shows subtitled international films. Most people find that the headphone setup in other theaters is usually not turned on, or the headphones are not functioning. Don’t they ever test out that equipment?
Rear window captioning from WGBH or open captions from Insight Cinema are other formats.
• Regal Entertainment Group controls 2/3 of the screens on the Cape, and have been showing open captioned movies at one screen in the Cape Cod Mall in Hyannis for several years, without publicity.
Regal’s Website for captioned movies in Massachusetts is: http://www.regmovies.com/nowshowing/opencaptionedshowtimes.aspx#MA
You should tell the management why you are there, and that you and all the people in your group would have stayed home if the movie were not captioned!
The Coalition for Movie Captioning www.hearinglossweb.com
We believe individuals who are deaf, hard of hearing and late-deafened should have the same freedom as anyone else:
- To attend any showing of any movie in any theater at any time;
- To be seated anywhere within the theater with their family and friends;
- To receive equal access to the audible portions of the movie through high quality captioning;
- To be guaranteed that the presentation of captioning is consistently reliable.
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When will it happen?
- Insurance coverage for hearing aids
- Tax breaks for hearing aid purchases
CORD News Brian Ladley’s job was cut!