Until recently, hearing aids were almost exclusively available in "skin tone" colours that didn't particularly match anyone's skin. Now all of the major manufac

Until recently, hearing aids were almost exclusively available in "skin tone" colours that didn't particularly match anyone's skin. Now all of the major manufacturers offer hearing aids in a range of consumer electronic-like metallic and gloss colours; this is especially true for hearing aids for children. There's a major generational shift, driven partly by changing social attitudes to disability but also because people are just much more used to seeing people with electronic things in their ears. A new generation of hearing aid users see their hearing aids as a gadget rather than a medical device; the choice to wear a "discreet" hearing aid is increasingly seen as a symptom of internalised stigma. The same thing is happening with prosthetic limbs, driven to a very large extent by parasports. We're increasingly used to seeing prosthetic limbs that were designed purely for performance, where form follows function. Prosthetists used to assume that everyone would want the most "normal-looking" prosthetic limb, but that's no longer a safe assumption; to many younger people with missing limbs, the thought of wearing a prosthetic designed to mimic a natural limb is actively repellent. They're much more comfortable wearing something made of raw carbon fibre than something covered in beige rubber.