IABC Café

Near the end of her life, my great-grandmother, Mimi, was deaf as a board. Although she had been fitted with a hearing aid, its occasional squeals and unglamorous appearance soon convinced her to throw the device into her top drawer. We grew accustomed to watching her nodding and smiling as we sat around in conversation, knowing that she had no clue as to what we were saying.

I’m about 40 years younger than Mimi was at the time of her death, but I’ve been concerned enough lately about my hearing to take advantage of a free professional hearing test. According to an article in the Chicago Tribune, I’m not alone.

Noise-induced hearing loss is escalating in the U.S. and not just among senior citizens. Eighteen percent of Baby Boomers have hearing loss; meanwhile, 7.4 percent of Generation Xers have damaged ears, according to the Virginia-based Better Hearing Institute. Excessive noise is the leading culprit, and audiologists suspect that the problem is fueled by the proliferation of devices with amplified sound, namely cell phones and MP3 players, such as IPods, which send noise directly into the delicate ear canal.

I’ve noticed some of the tell-tale signs of hearing loss, including an inability at times to hear someone three feet away, having to ask people to repeat themselves, and listening to my wife complain about how high I turn the volume on the TV. It made me worried that I’m finally paying the price for having stood directly in front of a bank of Ted Nugent’s Marshall amps during a college concert. So I dialed 1-800-222-3277 and listened to a series of tones, recording how many I heard in each year. The service answers 20,000 calls per month in the US and Canada, so the first thing you may hear is a busy signal; keep redialing.

I heard all of the tones once I got through, so I’m not ready for a hearing aid yet. But it did make me appreciate the role of hearing in communications. I’ve always told people that I take good care of my eyes, because I use them so much in my work. But communication is often audio as well, and if you or your intended audience has an undetected or treated hearing loss, you may need to adjust your communication practices and strategy. Certainly, web-based accessibility standards need to address both the visual and audio senses of audiences.

What could be worse than having your audience nodding and smiling at you…and not hearing a word that you’re saying?

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 17th, 2005 at 9:26 am and is filed under General, IABC. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.