In an effort to raise awareness of the challenges faced by Wayne County's hearing impaired residents, the Wayne County Health, Veterans, and Community Wellness Department is announcing its Hearing Impaired Awareness Campaign. The campaign will support Wayne County businesses that currently provide closed captioning on public television sets and encourage more Wayne County businesses to do the same.

"Wayne County is a welcoming community," said David T. Brooks, Director of Health, Veterans, and Community Wellness. "With this awareness campaign we are supporting all residents in having the ability to comprehend the content being broadcast from a public television regardless of the level of their personal hearing ability."

Wayne County has created door decals that can be displayed at businesses with closed captioning available on public television sets.

The decals will be distributed to restaurants by Wayne County Health Department staff during routine restaurant inspections. In addition, the decals will be available for business owners to pick up at their local chamber of commerce office and at the main health department office located at 33030 Van Born Road in Wayne.

Through this initiative, Wayne County will accomplish two objectives: raise awareness of the challenges faced by the hearing impaired when visiting public locations, and provide business owners with a way to advertise that they have public televisions with closed captioning provided.

"1.4 million people in Michigan are hearing impaired. Bringing awareness to this situation and supporting businesses that are voluntarily providing closed captioning on public television sets is another example of Wayne County putting its welcoming community initative into action," said Health Officer Carol Austerberry.

For more information on the closed captioning awareness campaign, or any of the programs offered through the Department of Health, Veterans and Community Wellness, Wellness Division, call (734) 727-7045 or visit the Wayne County website: http://www.waynecounty.com/hhs .