Have you ever experienced a hearing loss? Do you have ANY idea of how anyone with a significant loss has to work almost all the time to make sense of the world in myriad nuanced ways you can’t begin to imagine? Do you know what it’s like when you are using the most powerful hearing aids possible for your diagnosis and you still have difficulty using the phone or following fast conversations or understanding people who are more than six feet away or have their heads half turned, or people with soft enunciation (regardless of volume) or if there is any background noise at all ? Do you have any idea how many normally-hearing people who have the physical ability to enunciate a little clearer and are reminded of a person’s hearing loss but continue to mumble or slur over consonants or turn their heads away and shrug and say “oh well, that’s’ just how I talk (like it’s too much trouble) while you, on all four cylinders are straining to understand but cannot (even with the hearing aids turned on full volume and clarity?) Did you know Medicare doesn’t cover hearing aids, and the supplemental plans that do cover it are so exhorbitant you might as well just pay for the durned things. (Next time I need a pair I’ll have to pay about $11,000 out of pocket for my type). Lots of people just can’t afford hearing aids, or effective ones.
Having said all of this, I don’t think I’ve ever used speaker phones in public where there are people around though it’s the only way I talk on the phone, even with my daughter, who enunciates well (as I’ve had a hearing loss all of her life). If I get a call I must take I will immediately tell the person I’ll call back when I can find a place where I can talk or ask them to text. But there may be emergency situations in the future in which I’ll have to use it in the grocery store or an airport and I hope people will have patience and a little compassion.
For those who are just a little clueless, please consider that this older person in the public place may not be able to afford decent hearing aids, or that maybe they are getting a rare call from somebody they care about and the background noise is impossible to overcome. I hear so much joking and grumbling about hearing impaired people. We’re a cliche. You maybe wish we would go away or behave. But you have the luxury of being able to socialize and understand what is going on around you every day without exhausting yourself or becoming close to a social oddity, or just that kind-of quiet, boring person (with little to say , who doesn’t offer witty banter)on the fringes of any group ; someone who has given up, because is assumed they have no social skills or interest, but instead, it is simply that they can’t participate in quick repartee. Once the brain has interpreted the patterns of sound from the fog via context (did they say box or fox?) the conversation has moved on. Did you know that hearing loss is considered the most socially isolating disability? Did you know that social isolation in and of itself is a big risk factor for dementia, as is hearing loss in and of itself (because the brain is not being adequately stimulated by sound or receiving meaning?)
Maybe think about the fact that your annoyance by that old or annoying younger person (whose abilities you may not know ) on the speaker phone is rather short-lived…you’ll be in another aisle of the grocery store in a minute or two. At most, you’ll have to cope with it for ten minutes waiting in line. The person with the hearing loss has no break from the annoyance of trying to understand, ever, except for when they are conversing one on one or with a small group, without a lot of background noice with friends who are willing to speak fairly clearly, or when they can can go home and be alone and watch Netflix with captions.
When we talk about rudeness and annoyances, maybe we should walk in somebody else’s shoes in some cases. Should we warehouse the old and the disabled or only allow certain people in public when they can make YOUR life pleasant at every moment?
Rant over. If any of you reading are not insulted by what I had to say, and have some curiosity about what this might feel like…https://www.starkey.com/hearing-loss-simulator