While writing a story this week about what the pandemic is like for people who are hard of hearing or Deaf during the pandemic, I had many questions for my younger brother Josh Coles, 49, who is 80% hard of hearing.
(Josh refers to himself as “hard of hearing,” and thus, so will I.)
So, I called him up for an interview. While somewhat awkward, it was also enlightening.
He told me that within the 20% he can hear, there is a range of sounds he can detect, depending on their decibel level.
He hears fewer high-pitched noises than he hears deeper noises, for example.
He has never thought of his hearing aids as a barrier to achieving anything in his life, he said.
He also stressed that being hard of hearing is not like being Deaf, and he cannot speak on behalf of Deaf folks.
His current hearing aids are “very high tech,” he said, and allow him to hear well — as good or better than most hearing people.
“They are very expensive and very inaccessible to most,” he said, noting he has an excellent extended medical plan through work.
[In B.C., per aid, including batteries.]
When we were kids, Josh was supplied with a speech therapist at school until Grade 6 to help him learn how to make the sounds “s”, “t”, “sh”, “f”, “th,” and so on.
Sounds that he did not hear and thus could not say.
He developed many ways to compensate for his difference in hearing.
He figured out young that, though he couldn’t always hear it, a standard greeting is “How are you?”
“You always answer, ‘Fine!,’ whether I could hear the question or not,’’ he said, “Which is where the joke would come. They would say, ‘What is your name?’ and I would say ‘Fine!’” he recalled. “And they would say, ‘Hi, Fine!”
When he can’t wear his aids at night or at the beach, he is extra sensitive to what is going on around him, he said.
He also always looks behind him, a habit he picked up as a kid, not knowing for sure what he was missing because his hearing aids in those days didn’t pick up sounds behind him.
“So, you will see me walking down the street, and I will always step aside, to my left against the wall... always looking behind me to see if something is coming,” he said.
He is an untrained lip reader, which augments what he hears. This skill, of course, has become difficult during COVID-19 due to masks.
His hearing aids have a ‘mask’ setting for muffled noise, but still, masks do make it a big challenge for hard of hearing people.
“The sound is interrupted.... the enunciation gets muffled,” he said. “Those highs and lows get blocked because of masks.”
I asked him how hearing folks, like me, can make communication more accessible.
“Speak directly to them,” he said, noting that many hearing people have a habit of looking around while they talk.
“That is not a very kind thing to do to somebody who is hard of hearing. You should look at them when you ask a question.”
He said video conferencing is preferable to telephone conversations.
“Zoom is an effective form of communication in a serious environment for a hard of hearing person because I am looking at what they are saying and more often than not when people have a camera on, they are looking into it, so I can see what they are saying, and the expression on their faces a lot easier,” he said.
Most of all, he says what folks can do is have patience.
“We are all having a tough time here, right? You might have to repeat things a few times. ... Patience and kindness for one another, and you can get through it.”
