The HearMe project’s strength comes the breadth of its consultation partners and will be of interest, not to mention value, to anyone working in the following areas:

• Health policy
• Disability studies
• Economics
• Assistive technology
• Linguistics
• Civil engineering/architecture

We invite you to be part of it.

If we don’t have an inclusive society, the impacts of hearing conditions are not just physiological, the impacts are emotional, they’re psychological, they’re social and we need to take this into account.

Soundfair exists to create a fair world for people with hearing conditions – particularly those most vulnerable – through connection and participation. In order to effectively reflect and address the social determinants of health related to living with hearing conditions, our approach to advocacy is deeply rooted in stories of lived experience. And while every story is different, reflecting each individual’s unique life journey, there are points of commonality – the shared experience of living in a society that is both actively and passively disabling.

The first phase of the project began with a six-month community consultation and culminated in the publication of the HearMe Report; an immersive art exhibition by Kate Disher-Quill, author of Earshot; and keynote presentations by Minister Mark Coulton, Suzanne Waldron and Dr Caitlin Barr. The HearMe Report identified ten areas that require society-wide action:

• the need to embed the centrality and multiplicity of lived experience within all interventions
• the value of addressing hearing within a public health framework
• the individual’s disabling experience of the built environment
• the social factors that seed discrimination
• reimagining the hearing services sector
• investing in and providing assistive technologies
• the provision of captioning
• the opportunities of Auslan
• tinnitus as a heavy and unaddressed public health burden
• how aspects of an individual’s position within society combine with their hearing condition to create needs that are unmet by our current medical model of hearing care

The next phases of the HearMe Project will look to shape policy, promote cross-sector research and catalyse change because we believe businesses, governments, communities and health professionals can learn more and do more. The HearMe Project is bringing together the multidisciplinary expertise from government, community, medicine, allied health, business and academia. We are encouraging the necessary discussions relating to the most pressing challenges, as identified by people with hearing conditions, while encouraging collaboration and partnerships to deliver effective change. It is about reimagining what our world can be.