I’ve been thinking a lot about hearing loss stigma lately. Why does it continue to linger while other cultural stigmas successfully fade away? Is it because hearing loss is a communication disorder, impacting us right in the heart of our lives — our relationships? Whenever conversation gets challenging, bad feelings can result. To avoid the awkwardness, both sides retreat, hiding behind stigma for fear of failure.
Or is it because hearing aids are not like glasses. While they are incredibly helpful, they don’t fix our hearing loss entirely. To communicate well, we must employ other technologies (like apps or assistive listening devices) and use non-technical strategies like the types we discuss in our upcoming book, Hear & Beyond: Live Skillfully with Hearing Loss. Perhaps mismatched expectations are partly to blame.
Maybe the fact that hearing loss is so exhausting is a factor. To make it easier, we bluff, we fake it, we nod and smile rather than doing the extra work it takes to communicate. Battling our own internal stigma, we often do almost anything to avoid declaring our hearing loss out loud and asking for whatever assistance we need to participate.
Or maybe it is due to the hearing aids themselves. Rather than blinged-out accessories in fashion colors and styles like glasses, most hearing aids look like medical devices, offered only in muted shades of brown and beige. While some people decorate their devices, it is the rare exception. Many people—at least early on in their hearing loss lives—hope the devices will simply fade into the background.
I hid mine behind my long hair for many years before I came out of my hearing loss closet.
Would a Change in Look or Feel Lower Hearing Aid Stigma?
What if the world of hearing devices was different? Would a wider variety of options in more interesting colors and designs help us wear our devices with pride rather than chagrin? Would we flaunt the latest design element or communication feature rather than hide it?
Better looking options certainly couldn’t hurt if they didn’t add to the price, of course! At a minimum, breaking the standard mold would allow for more personalization and style. An added benefit: with higher fashion comes lower stigma. More interesting looking devices might improve advertising around hearing aids too, giving the items the panache needed to sell the product the way that stylish frames do in ads for glasses.
Let’s Call Hearing Aids Something Else
A new name—one other than hearing aids—could also help break the lingering stigma. Some manufacturers—particularly those in the direct-to-consumer space—are already heading in that direction. What if we adopted their terminology for all hearing related devices?
We could call our hearing aids:
- Hearables
- Earbuds
- Earables
- Amps
- Sound discs
- Boosters
- Volumizers
- Rockers
- or even Hearrings (When my co-author Gael Hannan’s son was very young, he called her hearing aids hearrings!)
- and more…
New OTC hearing aids may lead the industry in lowering stigma by adopting a more consumer-oriented tone in their look, feel and name.
Hey, person with perceived mild-to-moderate hearing loss, try these hearables or volumizers for those times you need a little sound boost.
Sure, that sounds like a good idea!
Better attitudes about hearing devices—whatever their shape, size and use case—will trickle up to more mainstream products over time, benefiting us all.
Let’s get that makeover started!
Shari Eberts is a passionate hearing health advocate and internationally recognized author and speaker on hearing loss issues. She is the founder of Living with Hearing Loss, a popular blog and online community for people with hearing loss, and an executive producer of We Hear You, an award-winning documentary about the hearing loss experience. Her book, Hear & Beyond: Live Skillfully with Hearing Loss, (co-authored with Gael Hannan) is the ultimate survival guide to living well with hearing loss. Shari has an adult-onset genetic hearing loss and hopes that by sharing her story, she will help others to live more peacefully with their own hearing issues. Connect with Shari: Blog, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter.
Bravo
Hello Shari:
I liked this article about the possibly changing the design of hearing aids. Well, it looks like the makeover has started.
In this same issue as your article is an interview about two guys doing that. Nick Morgan-Jones and Gray Dawdy of decibels.so have done exactly what you’re wishing for, so check it out. I have to say, I like the look of what they’ve designed.
BTW, congratulations on the publication of your new book with co-author Gael Hannan, who is a good friend of mine. I hope you both do well with it.
Bye for now and stay safe!
Nick here – thanks for the mention, Leon!
I really like hearables. The term was first used by futurist Nick Hunn in 2014 because he really thought the ear was a much better place for monitoring health than the wrist, where all the wearables go. He wrote “Few people realise that the ear is a remarkably good place to measure many vital signs. Unlike the wrist, the ear doesn’t move around much while you’re taking measurements, which can make it more reliable for things like heart rate, blood pressure, temperature and pulse oximetry. It can even provide a useful site for ECG measurement.” We are really just getting started with what they can do. his original post https://www.wearable-technologies.com/2014/04/hearables-the-new-wearables/ and my take on it when I got my first smart hearables from 2017 from my archives https://authory.com/LloydAlter/Hearables-Boomers-Answer-to-the-Hearing-Aid-adb9f76e6449343b1a1d1b54c96f6be06
I think the stigma is related to aging and our culture’s repugnance toward it. I feel it myself—my body is beginning to fail—it is disheartening and a bit frightening.
However, I wholeheartedly agree with a name change—I think that would help tremendously. Hearing aids invoke undesirable thoughts and images. Hearables is great, or almost any of the other options you listed. The design change idea I think is less important but may also be helpful. I fervently hope for improved technology so that hearables soon become more like glasses, when the correction will be complete and using them isn’t so much of an effort. Thank you for this article.
Years ago I asked for hearing aids to be attached to my glasses. Now I want CC to show up on my lenses! Hearing aids don’t work as easily or well as eye glasses. I often have a lens remade or an adjustment when I get new glasses. The office visits never end with hearing aids. As soon as their working it is time for a yearly hearing test and my ears get worse every time. I am glad I never cared what other people thought of me. I will take advantage of strategies to make daily stuff better.
I agree with this one 100%! I favor “hearables”, which is already in fairly wide use, as a word, but apparently not so much among the HOH (hard-of-hearing) themselves. Since the pandemic began, I’ve been wearing the Bose Hearphones, which were manufactured for awhile prior to Bose’s current hearing aids on offer (which DON’T interest me, as they resemble traditional hearing aids and don’t have certain needed features). My Hearphones are black, sit in the ear like a ‘bud’, and are visibly wired to a collar. It’s a bit bulky but it’s done a fantastic job for me for 2+ years w/o interfering with behind-the-ear mask holders. They work in all audio situations compared with standard HAs.. I’m now very interested in the new Jabra Enhance Plus (not the Pro). It is wireless, sits in the ear opening, is black or beige, and priced under $1000.. [Jabra used to be ReSound.] I live in a college town and almost everyone has something in their ears!
My ear amps are purple. Because I like purple. Some might say they’re amethyst – February being my birth month.
I’ve been wearing coloured ear amps for nearly 2 decades, through several pairs. Always purple, er… amethyst. I can’t say if they’ve done anything toward lessening stigma in general, but they have garnered appreciate, positive comments when specifically discussed. And I like them. A lot. Firstly, I couldn’t function without them. Secondly, and more pertinent to the article, I’ve long felt that ear amps should be more like glasses or other accoutrements accessories; stylish or coloured in an effort to increase user satisfaction, acceptance, and lessen overall societal stigma. Especially for children who may not need ear amps yet, but perhaps will down the road and seeing parents, relatives, friends or role models with bright, colourful, stylish amps help lessen stigma and increase positive acceptance.
I’d like to also think the colour makes them standout somewhat. Just enough to bring them to the attention of others thereby triggering awareness of my hearing loss and corresponding better communication interactions. Ha. Dreams are good…
All of this makes sense. However, until the hearing aid industry stops promoting stigma and denial in all of their advertising, it probably won’t change much. I am very tired of ads that say “Our product is so small no one will know you’re wearing it” etc. I have ordered colored hearing aids ever since I first saw an HLAA member wearing red ones. That was back in the mid 80s! I went with blue, and was disappointed they didn’t come in Green, the color of my favorite sports team. 🙂 I bought some hearing aid covers and decorated them for different occasions. Just for fun, of course. My hair was short then. Now it’s long, but I still have a blue hearing aid with a CI processor that doesn’t match! My original CI processor was blue too, but Cochlear Corp. stopped making them available in colors. Why?
Most major manufacturers of hearing aids have had, and still have, colored products. Obviously, they don’t sell well because of the more popular promotion to call them invisible. I suspect they are only promoted in colors for kids.
How do we get the industry to stop promoting stigma and denial?
As a bilateral CI implant, a peer mentor and an advocate for more and better accessibility in public for the Deaf and hard of hearing, I’ve grappled for years with the issue of stigma. When only one in five with diagnosed hearing loss chooses to wear hearing aids in both the US and in countries with socialized medicine – where they are dispensed at little or no cost to consumers – stigma remains a problem to be overcome.
More stylish options would certainly help, especially if wearers would proudly display them out and about. HA makers now offer children colorful devices with graphic options. But to market contemporary style options to adults would require marketing that ceases to promote in images and text ever-smaller devices that are “invisible” or “nearly invisible.”
Broader issues also need to be addressed: Improved functioning would lessen the tendency of Grandpa Jones putting his new HAs on and soon deciding after venturing into a noisy room that, “These don’t work worth a darn.”
And more consumers speaking up in public about the need for accessibility options and informing policy makers about hearing loss as a public health problem with adverse social and economic consequences would, in the long run, contribute to greater overall acceptance. May our voices be heard in growing numbers.
After a sudden loss of hearing in a fall on a concrete floor, my hearing loss came instantly in one ear, reinforced by some hearing loss in the other ear.
My hearing loss meant loss of sociability in most public situation, including meetings, social gatherings, family meals, as well as in pharmacies, grocery stores, public venues, driving with others – not hearing the radio, etc.. etc. Covid-19 just added to my isolation.
My experience is that most hearing people have little tolerance for non-hearing people, me, even those who have known me for many years.. (In contrast, my family has been very helpful.) The general experience is everyday, in every way, in every circumstance. I do not believe this is just me. The reality of non-hearing is intolerable to very many people – maybe a kind of fear – more so it is beyond their level of experience..
Do as i will, I can not change all of those people all the time. I do everything I can to make my hearing better. My frustration is reflected even in the frustration of hearing professionals – surgeons, audiologists, sellers of hearing aids, etc. – when I may not respond well to all they sincerely and professionally try to do for me. Yet they are my hope. On the other hand, I fear the profit motive in selling hearing aids and services, while knowing the significance and necessity of private earnings to give me good services. I have also found the profit motive problematic in buying eye glasses.
Stylistic makeovers that improve hearing, reduce stigmas, enhance self worth, make the person with hearing loss feel better, should be welcomed.
I am very thankful to your, Sherri, for your efforts on our behalf. Stand together and you will stand taller. Today, we can learn from those who are even more oppressed than we. are and suffering to stay alive.
Robert Broke