We encourage persons with hearing loss to communicate their challenges to those whom they work closely with, be it at school, work or other social contexts. The following is an example of a letter that a deaf professional sent to his colleagues, telling them his condition and suggesting how they can help fit him better into his job so that it becomes a win-win situation for all in the team.

http://cyberfellowship.blogspot.com/2006/08/open-letter-to-colleagues-15th-aug.html 

A must-read for employers/colleagues of the deaf/hearing impaired 

Extracted from “Nokia inductive loop brings mobile communications to hearing aid users”, http://press.nokia.com/PR/199804/776663_5.html

Nokia LPS-1 is an easy to use device for smooth interaction between a hearing aid and a digital mobile phone … The device consists of a wireloop which goes around the user’s neck and connects to the bottom of the mobile phone. The loopset transmits speech from the phone to the hearing aid in the ear. The product has a built-in microphone and therefore provides full hands free operation for the user…The Nokia LPS-1 is the first product of its kind in the world. Hearing impaired people have previously been unable to use digital mobile phones due to interference caused by the digital signal. Now for the first time there is a solution to overcome this difficulty in an easy way……”Hearing aid users have previously been excluded from digital mobile communications. We are very happy to be able to introduce this simple but yet ingenious innovation, which will provide that user group a practical way to use portable phones”, said Mikko Palatsi, Product Marketing Manager, Nokia Mobile Phones. Approximately 8 million people use hearing aids in Europe today. ————————A number of hearing services provider, such as Singapore Association for the Deaf (SADeaf), sell Induction loop at little more than $200 (as of 2006). Compatible Nokia mobile phone models are

Most of us know what’s hearing loss (or the myths of it) but how many of us know what it actually means? A late-deafened member shared with us these…

Hearing aids (HAs) do not restore full normal hearing. The reasons are:

1. Firstly, my audiogram drops sharply after 2kHz. Called a ski-slope type of loss, this is common for sensorineural hearing loss which is what afflicts about 80% of hearing loss cases. Speech frequencies on the other hand extend from about 250 Hz to 4kHz. The problem is that the consonant sounds are in the higher frequencies, and these higher frequencies are not possible to amplify to a useable level for us.  So hoh hear vowels fine but not consonants. That is why words like ‘two’ and ‘who’ sound alike to us. Fortunately consonants involve more visible movement of the speaker’s lips, mouth and throat so all hoh people lip-read with more or less skill to fill in the missing consonants, but this process is still error-prone.
2. Secondly, at such low hearing levels, there is less discrimination of sound left. My loss of 50dB means I need 10,000 times the Sound Power Level (10dB being equivalent to a ratio of 10 times) to hear a sound with the same loudness as a normal hearing person. 
3. HAs amplify a lot of background noise and this comes as a shock to all new wearers. Now somehow the natural ear, through some signal-processing in the brain, attenuates the background noise for hearing people. This process is not fully understood. … The background noise in a movie masks the words for the hard-of-hearing (hoh), just as it makes conversation harder for us to follow in real life.  Documentaries (or the news) are clearer.
4. Also in a crowded, noisy bar type of hearing situation, where there is cross-talk, music playing and lots of background noise, a hearing person can pick out a strand of conversation and focus on it and follow it, again with the help of the brain. Now, in hoh, this natural signal processing breaks down because so much discrimination is lost (all those dead cilia in the cochlea). 
5. Aesthetically, sound also becomes much less pleasing. The quality or timbre of a sound comes from the harmonics and the relative strengths of those harmonics.  So when middle C sounds on the piano at 256Hz, hearing person also hear the harmonics at 512Hz, 1024Hz, 2048Hz, etc. Different instruments playing middle C have different sound signatures and that makes them sound different.  Hoh miss a lot of this richness of sound.
6. Another effect of losing the harmonics is that voices are harder to recognise.  Normally, voices imprint so deeply in our minds that hearing people can recognise a voice on the phone not heard in 10 yrs. Nowadays, I must have caller ID, and I often don’t pick up unrecognised calls because it takes so much effort to identify as I cannot hear names either. 

If you or your child had an audiogram done, you may wonder what the little graph means. Find out more here. It helps you understand what kind of sound/voice types/range the person can or cannot hear well.

Source: Center for Hearing Loss Help

http://www.hearinglosshelp.com

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has a very concise and easy-to-understand visualization of how the Cochlear Implant helps people with severe to profound hearing loss hear. Access it here to find out more.

Source: U.S. Food and Drug Administration, Department of Health and Human Services

http://www.fda.gov/cdrh/cochlear/implantpop.html