I’ve talked about the challenges we HoHs have when party time comes a-knocking. So, what follows won’t be completely new. But since the hard of hearing challenges are top of mind right now, I wanted to pour some concrete examples in the stead of painting some hypothetical ones.
Julie’s dad’s 80th birthday was nigh. A celebration needed to be held! No mere house could hope to contain all the guests. They needed to rent a hall. The choice of venue is so important for many different reasons. As someone who’s never had to plan a party of such magnitude, the only reasons I thought of were hearing-related.
When I first stepped foot in the hall, such thoughts were many.
The hall was large-ish. It could comfortably hold a couple hundred party-goers. The walls were bare, which made the myriad of voices bounce around like a toddler on Jolt Cola. The ceiling wasn’t looming nor was it lost in the shadows at some unseen height above. In fact, it seemed to be a drop-ceiling. That meant the panels that hid the ducts and wires were soft enough to absorb some of the sounds. That said, it could only do so much.
The sound of 100+ people having dozens of conversations, all propped up by the DJ’s tunes, is not an ideal hearing environment for anyone. I will say the DJ showed a good bit of situational awareness. He kept the tunes to a dull roar which spared us all from having to shout to be heard. As the hub and the bub started to really get going, I steeled myself to face the challenge of new voices. I would be at the mercy of unknown volumes, unfamiliar accents, unexpected speeds.
Turns out I didn’t even need to iron myself for the challenge.
Even if my reputation as one-half of the Down the Tubes Duo did precede me, I was pleasantly surprised by how HoH-friendly everyone’s speech was. I didn’t catch every word everyone said but to a man (and woman) I was presented with lips to read, measured tones to hear, and at a Goldilocks speed, too. Julie’s extraordinary hearing advocacy skills and all the decades of her doing so was, I’m sure, a major factor. But still, the world doesn’t give hearing challenges a second thought.
Hell, most of the time hearing challenges don’t even get a first thought.
I want to thank everyone I spoke with. Your hearing accommodations were terrifically thoughtful, your effusive praise for Down the Tubes was tremendously appreciated (if a tad embarrassing), your genuine welcoming attitude got my heart to make like The Grinch and grow three sizes. Even if being the center of attention made the introvert in me want to run and hide, even if all the phenomenal accommodations didn’t take away all the hearing challenges, I was so encouraged by the party.
The only times I had less trouble were at hearing loss conventions.
The majority of the people in attendance didn’t have hearing loss. Which meant that the work Julie and I are doing is bearing fruit. People are becoming more aware of hearing loss, more ready to accommodate without being asked. That said, I met a few fellow hearing-aid users and even someone seeking advice on getting their his set of aids.
And that advice wasn’t the only teachable moment, either.
Julie and Joe created a hearting-tugging-yet-funny presentation. (Seriously, if you ever need someone to MC, well, anything, Joe is your man.) Julie worked her magic with images and asked me to lend a hand to make it accessible. Since they were using Google Slides, it was a cinch. I was able to check out a projector from my library, hook it up to Julie’s MacBook, and turn on the auto-captions native to Google Slides. (If you’re thinking of going this route, please note that it does require an internet connection.)
While not the high-accuracy CART quality of captions, it did a bang-up job. The DJ provided a mic, which helped speakers’ voices be captured by the MacBook’s mic and thus captioned. The only settings I needed to change were to put the captions above the slides, so people’s heads at the front tables weren’t making better doors than windows, and make them extra large, so that the words were large enough to be read by the people hovering at the food table in the back. The only thing I’d do differently next time is insist on people using the mic. Most people aren’t as loud as they think they are – with the possible exception of my brother – and so the technology can’t do its job.
Interested in making your next gathering hearing accessible? Drop us a line at hello@dttproduction.com. Our prices won’t break the bank. OK, that shameless plug for more money out of the way, there’s one more thing I wanted to touch on.
Active Listening.
There was a lot of it. Accommodations made that activity less strenuous but didn’t remove it completely. It doesn’t matter how accommodating people are or how good the hearing assistive technology is, hearing is hard for me. Even at those aforementioned hearing loss conventions, complete with the marvelous hearing loop technology, I needed to actively listen. I would collapse into bed at the end of the day, worn out with trying to do what so many people can do effortlessly. So it came as no surprise that I was worn out at the end of this party.
I spent the next day reading. The weather turned here in Massachusetts. Which meant I could spend most of the afternoon on the porch with a beer in one hand, a book in the other, and a dog in my lap. (“Most” because by the time late afternoon hit, our three hours of Spring we get each year gave way to Summer.) My ears were as tired as my mind. A good meditation in the morning allowed the brain fog to lift enough to read. Sometimes after a huge gathering, the listening fatigue and the introvert hangover conspire to make the simple act of reading too arduous. At those times, I’ll throw on a movie I’ve seen eleventy-billion times, like T2 or Wayne’s World, so that I don’t need to hear what they’re saying.
This was not one of those times.
I think that the rush I got from accommodating others with the captions and being accommodated by others with the fantastic HoH speech etiquette, staved off the worst of the brain fog.
Nature or nurture?
Communication is both.
Hearing takes teamwork.
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