Deaf Awareness - from a deaf member
For Deaf Awareness Week, Carole gives some practical advice to help us to be more deaf aware and improve communication.
There are many different forms of deafness and everyone is different.
More than eight million adults in the UK are deaf or have a hearing loss.
Some people are deaf from birth, but others may have gradual hearing loss due to aging or can lose it overnight due to infection or injury.
Some people use BSL (British Sign Language) or Makaton, which is another way of signing, and others like me use lip reading. According to deafness people use hearing aids or cochlear implants to enable them to hear. Some of the deaf community may or may not use aids and communicate by signing.
Lip reading is like piecing together bits of a jigsaw. You must piece together words you hear with those that sound likely to have been said, according to the context of the conversation. This can be very tiring, especially after a long day.
Tablets and mobile phones have speech to text software which can help to take part in conversations and loop systems, types of microphones help too. There are also captions on Zoom and Teams. If you are having trouble hearing, try them out.
It’s important to ask deaf or hard of hearing people what you can do to make communication easier as it will vary from person to person. In meetings and at work, for us to lipread you will firstly need to get our attention. Face us and speak clearly. Use good lighting and don’t cover your mouth. Use facial expressions and body language. Try not to shout or exaggerate your speech, as this distorts lip shapes and patterns. Repeat when asked. Please don’t say “it doesn’t matter” when asked to repeat. We really want to know what you said and be included fully in the conversation!
One in seven adults suffer from tinnitus. You can have tinnitus even if you do not have a hearing loss. Often it can be ringing noises but can be whistling, whirring or other persistent noise. It can be caused by normal aging but usually from exposure to loud noise. It’s important for everyone to protect their hearing by using ear defenders or ear plugs in noisy environments. Tinnitus cannot be cured but there are ways to manage it by relaxing and knowing situations where it may bring on an episode.
The Royal National Institute for Deaf People (RNID) offers e-learning deaf awareness training courses that staff, line managers and HR teams can take.
Team members can be given opportunities to learn communication skills to support colleagues, or they can just ask the deaf or hard of hearing what support they need.
This is just a small insight on how to be deaf aware. If you want to find out more have a look at the RNID website or talk to someone you know who is deaf or hard of hearing.