Thread by @DisabledTimes

Okay, so as it's still deaf awareness week, I thought I'd do a thread on one of the most commonly asked questions:

Today's topic is; how do hearing aids work?

Hearing, or lack thereof, is a complex issue and isnt just fixed by amplifying sound.

I don't know how hearing aids work technically, but I can tell you what they do and what I have to do in order to hear.

So I'm severely deaf, which means that I can't hear speech without my hearing aids in. I rely a lot on visual cues and my hearing aids to help me out.

My hearing aids amplify the world around me, this means ALL the sounds. For most hearing people, their brains can separate sounds and can focus on a specific sound and focus on someone talking. My brain doesn't work like this because I've been deaf all my life.

Hearing aids can also only improve sound by so much; I'm still deaf with my hearing aids in. Having hearing aids isn't a cure, and I still have hearing loss no matter how perfectly matched the hearing aids are to my hearing loss, as I'll explain in a bit

I can't filter out sound, I can't focus on one source of noise and this means I have to rely on context, guesswork and lipreading. Perfect accessibility is a quiet room, which is well lit and someone speaking to me while facing me without covering their lips.

It's IMPOSSIBLE to be in a situation like that, so I have to make do.

This has a knock on effect; if I don't know the person's accent then I don't know their lip patterns and struggle to hear them.

If people use new words that I don't know, or pronounce words differently, I can't even begin to figure out what the word is. I often ask how to spell something so I can work it out in my head and then turn the nonsense sound into a word.

This all means that I get hearing fatigue. Trying to hear in less that ideal situations means I have to concentrate far more to understand what is happening. This means that meetings where people talk over each other, or when there's background music etc. I find them exhausting

When I'm ill with a cold and all my sinuses are blocked, my ears are also blocked up, so whatever improvement hearing aids have on my hearing, are massively diminished. And there's no point in me trying to hear you 😂

Anyway, I hope this helps answer questions people may have, and feel free to ask more!

/end

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