[thaumasiotes]

> hearing aids sadly have a stigma attached to them

It's probably worth distinguishing between two kinds of phenomena that might be described as carrying a stigma:

- Something might lead other people to mock or otherwise denigrate you for exhibiting it. Being fat is a good example here; fat people get a lot of messaging from society that they're worse people for being fat.

- Something might carry no real significance to the rest of society while still being viewed, by the individual, as painfully embarrassing. There's a traditional view that women don't like to wear glasses because they think the glasses ruin their looks. I don't know how well that currently corresponds to reality; I've known one girl who really hated her glasses for that reason and another who, not needing glasses of her own, liked to take other people's and wear them -- but that's the prototype of a "category two" stigma: a woman who hates wearing her glasses even though no one around her sees anything wrong with them.

I suspect that hearing aids are firmly within the second category, which means getting people to wear them "openly" should be doable.

[adrianhoward]

"I suspect that hearing aids are firmly within the second category, which means getting people to wear them "openly" should be doable."

You suspect wrongly. Having seen the attitudes to my father change when he wore one. Ranging from outright verbal abuse, to assumptions of stupidity & senility.

[hibbelig]

Maybe it's related to age? I've been wearing "behind the ears" aids since I was 7 and I never sensed any perception like that.

(I have no idea what is the correct term for "behind the ears", I hope it's understandable.)

[R_Edward]

17 years ago, I worked for a hearing aid manufacturer. The common terms in use there were BTE and ITE, for "behind the ear" and "in the ear." Frankly, I thought the initialisms were poorly conceived. ITE is three syllables, same as "in the ear," and less meaningful for the uninitiated. BTE only saves you one syllable, again at the cost of meaningfulness. But either which way, your terminology is both understandable and correct.

Off-topic: While I was there, they asked employees to submit ideas for a new hearing aid marketing slogan, with the incentive of a free vacation to Vegas going to the person who submitted the one they used. For some reason, I did not win the vacation with my suggestion: "Stick It In Your Ear!"

[thaumasiotes]

It would be pretty interesting to see people assume that a ten-year-old suffered from senility because he was wearing a hearing aid. By definition, it only applies to the old.

[72deluxe]

Really? Who from? That's terrible.

[adrianhoward]

Just people.

At the low end when eating out in restaurants occasionally having wait staff ignore him and asking other folk at the table "what would he like", or people assuming that he couldn't hear and talking about him — to at the high end having a guy shouting "deaf fuck" at him repeatedly on the street for no obvious reason.

I'm not trying to say that this happened every day — especially the outright insults. But it was enough to be noticeable.

I suspect, as @hibbelig commented, age had something to do with it.