ORIGINAL ARTICLE Situations of Choice: Configuring the Empowered Consumer of Hearing Technologies Anette Lykke Hindhede Ó Springer Science+Business Media New York 2013 Abstract Focusing on the largest and, arguably, the least visible disability group, the hearing impaired, this paper explores present-day views and understandings of hearing impairment and rehabilitation in a Danish context, with particular focus on working-age adults with late onset of hearing impairment. The paper shows how recent changes in perception of the hearing impaired patient relate to the intro- duction of a new health care reform that turns audiological rehabilitation into a consumer issue. Ethnographic and interview data from hearing clinics provides evidence that the hearing technologies that are on offer stabilise in specific forms through processes of negotiation among a variety of social actors representing the interests of science, industry, government, and hearing-impaired people. The dis- cussion critically considers the emergence of an ‘‘informed consumer’’ in audio- logical practices. Keywords Choice Á Consumerism Á Empowerment Á Hearing technologies Á Health research Introduction This paper focuses on the present-day heterogeneous processes and practices of becoming a hearing aid user. Hearing problems affect a significant segment of the Western population, as the proportion of hearing-impaired people is approximately 16 %. For people of working age, the proportion is approximately 11 % [25, 26]. However, only about 5 % of the population wear a hearing aid. As the numbers indicate, there appears to be a large group who seem to be reluctant to acknowledge their hearing impairment, or who seem not to consider audiological rehabilitation in A. L. Hindhede (&) Steno Health Promotion Center, Niels Steensens Vej 8, 2820 Gentofte, Denmark e-mail: atlh@steno.dk 123 Health Care Anal DOI 10.1007/s10728-013-0261-4