The impact of hearing impairment on television viewing in the UK

Just under one in 10 of a nationally representative sample of UK television viewers said that they experienced difficulty with their hearing. These hard-of-hearing viewers were found to report much greater difficulty watching programmes (mean difficulty rating = 32%) than elderly viewers with no reported hearing difficulty (mean difficulty rating = 10%), or those viewers generally who said they had no hearing problems (mean difficulty rating = 3%). Using a similarly constructed rating for reported enjoyment of different television programmes, hard-of-hearing viewers were found to exhibit a small reduction in enjoyment across the majority of programmes types. While it might have been anticipated that a greater proportion of those with impaired hearing owned a teletext television set giving them access to subtitling, this was not found to be the case. Across the sample as a whole, teletext ownership was shown to be 45%, but was lower than this (38.5%) amongst the hard-of-hearing. The findings corroborate what has been shown in another study, namely that teletext ownership is lower among older viewers. Hearing impairment, if it is not congenital or of early childhood origin, is a condition associated with increasing age. Thus, those whose viewing and appreciation of programmes might be enhanced by subtitles, in the main, do not have access to them. Among hard-of-hearing viewers who did have access to the teletext subtitle service, two thirds of those aged 51 years and over felt that subtitles assisted their understanding of television programmes. As one might expect, of those owning teletext, hard-of-hearing viewers reported greatest use of subtitles. Thirteen per cent of those with hearing difficulty and aged over 51 years said they used subtitles for all programmes watched and a further 26% of the over fifties with hearing difficulty reported regularly using subtitles for selected programmes. These data advocate that there are many hard-of-hearing viewers whose viewing could be enhanced by subtitling. Effort should be made to promote public and professional awareness of the availability of teletext subtitling and additional resources will be needed to combat the technophobia which may hinder older people from initially purchasing a teletext television set, or making effective use of one they already own.