Angie becomes Hearing Ambassador
In September 2014, the Accessible Derbyshire Team was joined by Hearing Ambassador, award-winning deafened entrepreneur, Angie Aspinall.
Angie was born and brought up in Derbyshire and now lives just over the border in West Yorkshire.
At the age of 30, when Angie was diagnosed with Otosclerosis (a condition which causes progressive deafness) she thought she would be unable to cope, but lipreading classes and communication techniques enabled her to continue working, even when the condition started in her 'good' ear. By the age of 33, she was using a hearing aid on a daily basis. In April 2011, tragedy stuck and Angie suffered sudden sensorineural deafness in her 'good' ear, leaving it permanently profoundly deaf. With very little hearing remaining in her other ear, she was immediately cut off from everyone around her and, while she was still able to speak (and to hear her own voice), she was unable to hear what others were saying.
Angie's career spans the public, private and voluntary sectors and now she has a variety of business interests: Access Solutions, Hearing Loss Friendly, Quietly Relaxing Holidays and Aspinall Ink. She will be involved with Accessible Derbyshire in respect tosupporting the hospitality industry to better meet the needs of people with hearing loss.
Angie says, “I’m delighted to have been invited to become the Hearing Ambassador for Accessible Derbyshire. As well as visiting many of my favourite childhood haunts, I hope to be able to inspire business owners to make simple changes which will make real differences to people with hearing loss when visiting accommodation, visitor attractions and eateries in the area.” Angie is a founding Director of Access Solutions, a company specialising in supporting the hospitality industry to become hearing loss friendly via audits, training and specialist equipment. Access Solutions helps ensure that accommodation providers are complying with all the relevant legislation in respect of meeting the needs of visitors with hearing loss and they provide training on excellence in customer care for people with hearing loss.
Along with her business partner, Julie Leggett, Angie has also founded Hearing Loss Friendly a site showcasing holiday accommodation and spas which meet the needs of people with hearing loss and those which have also attained their Sounds Good Charter Mark.
In addition to this, Angie is a freelance journalist who writes about disability and access issues and she is also a travel writer. She is also one of the co-founders of the business networking phenomenon, #Yorkshirehour, the original ‘local hour’ on Twitter. She is also the organiser of the popular #Yorkshirehourlive business networking events.
