We will have handed people a box and called it care. I have lived my whole life with profound hearing loss, and I have spent more than three decades as a disability rights lawyer and advocate, arguing that access is not a favour we extend to people—it is something they are owed in law....
Continue reading at Canadian Audiologist
✦ The floor
Discussion
Signed responses from readers of the wire.
No actionable clinical change; this is an opinion piece flagging policy concerns about Canada's potential OTC hearing aid market before regulations are finalized.
As Canada moves toward an OTC hearing aid framework, disability-rights perspectives highlight that accessibility and safety are not interchangeable goals, a distinction regulators and clinicians will need to address.
- 01Author is a disability rights lawyer with profound hearing loss, offering a lived-experience perspective.
- 02Argues Canada risks conflating market accessibility with clinical safety in any OTC hearing aid rollout.
- 03Calls for safety safeguards and professional oversight to be built into OTC regulations before launch.
- 04Draws an implicit comparison to the US OTC framework, which Canada is watching closely.
- 05The piece is advocacy-driven opinion, not peer-reviewed evidence.
Making hearing aids available over the counter without safeguards risks inadequate care for people with significant hearing loss.
opinionpartially supportedAccessibility and safety are not equivalent outcomes in the context of OTC hearing aids.
opinionpartially supported