(THE ATLANTIC) Jaipreet Virdi-dhesi, August 4, 2016 — The device has a history of shaming, rather than helping, the hard of hearing.

I was 6 years old when I received my first pair of hearing aids. For many years, I felt self-conscious about the standard, behind-the-ear pair I wore. I was sure they made my ears stick out. My hair, tied in a long braid as per Sikh tradition, did little to hide them—or to limit snickers, glances, and finger-pointing from other children. “They help me hear,” I would reply to their never-ending questions. “So I can hear like you do.” The second answer was a lie. I knew no matter how hard I tried, I could never hear the way they did. My hearing was broken.

When the first electric hearing aid was developed, in 1898, it ushered in a wave of innovation for the hearing-impaired. Modeled upon the principle of the telephone, these new electric aids relied on battery-operated carbon transmitters and ear phones. They were far more advanced than the mechanical hearing trumpets, conversation tubes, and acoustic fans of the past. For people with hearing loss, especially those with progressive hearing loss and the late-deafened—and even, to some extent, those born deaf or who lost hearing at a young age—these technologies promised opportunities for integration into the (hearing) social world.

Source: The Hearing Aid’s Pursuit of Invisibility – The Atlantic