The article "Video aid for deaf people" by Deborah Tucknott (The Argus, July 10) was informative.

However, readers need to know a few things about deaf people.

According to the Royal National Institute for Deaf People (RNID), one in seven people in the UK has a hearing problem.

So Brighton and Hove, with a population of 250,000, would have about 35,000 hearing-impaired people (HIPs).

The Royal Sussex County Hospital's audiology department has 17,000 people on its books.

Some deaf people use British Sign Language to communicate. These are mainly people with no hearing at all.

Adherents to BSL claim there are 70,000 users in the UK so there should be some 300 BSL users in Brighton and Hove. I doubt that.

Anyway, fewer than one per cent of the city's deaf people uses BSL.

Provision for HIPs has been lamentable but the situation is improving.

Audiology has long been the Cinderella of the NHS although hearing aids are cheap.

Modern digital hearing aids cost £70 and are now available free from the NHS to all who need them.

Among the tiny BSL group (they call themselves the "Deaf community") are extremists who are hostile to people who want to improve their residual hearing as they regard deafness as "a culture" - as something good.

They picket RNID exhibitions of hearing aids, calling them "traitors".

They campaign for "designer deaf babies", demanding their "human right" to mutilate embryos to make them deaf.

I stress that no-one in the article is in that category.

However, the extremists are influential and can wreak havoc by targetting gullible people like social workers and councillors.

Deaf people do not have the "right" to have sign language interpreters for their GP appointments.

These interpreters are skilled and expensive, usually with a minimum two-hour booking period.

Their fees would come out of NHS funds and it would be crazy to spend £100 on a ten-minute appointment just to assert a "right" rather than a need.

Most GP surgeries still make no provision for the 99 per cent of HIPs who do not "sign".

Of course, if there is a real need for a BSL interpreter, one should be provided.

Scant attention was given to the Sussex Deaf Association in the video.

This is a charity serving the whole spectrum of hearing loss.

Therefore, unlike DEAF, it cannot campaign and the needs of the mass of HIPs are often overlooked.

-Colin Bennett, Hove