ABSTRACT
Despite the fact that people with hearing disability have been stigmatised across millennia, the implications of such a finding have not made their way into the design of many hearing services. Despite this systemic and well-resourced resistance to change, scholars, clinicians and community based service providers from across the western world continue to grapple with the psycho-social impacts of hearing disability. It is evident to many that there is a critical social element(s) to hearing disability. But exactly what is this element? How is it to be understood, explained and justified in academic, clinical, economic and human terms?
