Australian company under fire for 'deaf shaming' after calling hearing aids ugly

A Victorian company has come under fire for an ad that called hearing aids 'ugly' and pictured a woman with a prawn on her ear.

Victorian Hearing apologised after members of the deaf community labelled the advertisement 'awful', 'upsetting' and 'degrading'.

The ad for 'invisible' hearing aids was posted to Facebook and was met with outrage by hearing impaired Australians and the parents of hearing impaired children, with people from as far as the U.S. also complaining.

In a statement the company apologised for the ad causing offence but sought to justify the artwork and message.

'Victorian Hearing sincerely apologizes if our current invisible hearing solution add was hurtful, it was certainly not our intention,' the company said.

'However, we are fighting a war with a large population of Australians (1 in 5) who refuse to seek hearing amplification because they are embarrassed.

'Victorian Hearing has, for many years, advertised BTE and traditional hearing aids without any success in helping this large group of people, so we tried something out of the box.

The company went on to claim that the ad had helped 'many who would have never stepped foot inside an audiology clinic as they were not aware of all options available'.

SOURCE