Tips for Communicating With Hearing Loss
Lifestyle Adjustments for Persons with Hearing Loss
Communicate Face to Face:
- LOOK at the face of the speaker for all parts of the conversation. So often with familiar speakers, many do not look at the speaker’s face
- Do not walk away while speaking to a hearing impaired person.
- Wait to start speaking to a hearing impaired person until you see that she or he is looking at your face.
- If the person speaking to you turns and walks away while talking, say, “please hold that thought until you come back!”
- Watch the speaker’s eyes and lips
Manage Background Noise Environment:
- While talking, turn down or mute the TV, turn off the microwave, the oven fan, the dishwasher, the radio, and avoid talking over running water.
- In restaurants, put your back to the noise, and put your conversation target towards a quiet corner.
- Note that the kind of background noise that is most difficult for a person with hearing loss is a room full of talking people. In order to communicate with a person hard of hearing, finding a quieter place often helps. At the family dinner table, some kind soul should ask the table to be more quiet from time to time with only one talker at a time who, then, directly faces the hearing impaired person.
Speech Pointers:
- Slow speech delivery down
- Slow speech pattern, use short phrases
- Use frequent pauses
- Watch the hearing impaired person’s face to see if he/she seems to understand.
- Use non verbal cues to signal lack of understanding.
Signal to others that you do not understand:
Educate and remind your conversational partners that you need their help for you to hear. Teach them that if you cup a hand to an ear or pull an ear lobe, that is a visual cue that you do not understand. It does not necessarily mean, “speak louder”. Rather, it means speak face to face, cut down background noise, speak more slowly, articulate each word fully, and take turns speaking.
While watching the speaker’s face, use non-verbal tricks to:
- Pull their eyes to your face
- Drum the table
- Shuffle papers
- Wiggle fingers
Useing these techniques in a continuously variable pattern will cause the speaker to give you his/her face and the varying pattern will avoid annoying them.