Cruise lines ignoring hard-of-hearing - Letters

Cruise Travel, July-August, 2003 by Joan Cerny

In the "Accessible Summit" article (Cruise Travel, December 2002) author Adam Lloyd spoke of handicapped only in terms of wheelchair accessibility. No one has ever mentioned the problems involved in getting an ALD (Assisted Listening Device) for the hard-of-hearing. Without the ALD, one cannot enjoy or hear the evening shows or any other talks onboard. The majority of ships do not have ALD's. On those that do, there is a real fight to get them to work properly and to work everywhere. So half the enjoyment of being on a ship is not available to the handicapped hard-of-hearing.

There usually is no closed captioning on the TVs in the staterooms or elsewhere on the ship. Even when you tell the ship in advance that your husband is deaf, no devices are placed in the stateroom. One exception--the Carnival Legend. We were on her last year, and I was amazed to see all the hearing equipment in our room when we arrived. However, they did forget the earphones for the public rooms; but I give them credit, they had the earphones flown in to our first stop.

Do your readers have comments on these issues? Why have the ships not addressed this problem? And when will they comply with the handicapped laws?

Joan Cerny, Kingsville, MD