My name is Amy and I have a severe hearing loss in both ears. My hearing loss, with the available technology hasn’t been a negative thing in my life, challenging at times, but I’ve always been able to find a coping mechanism. My main coping mechanism is lip reading which I’ve done from the day I was born. Lip reading has been my superpower and to have that taken away, was disabling for me. Until this pandemic I never really saw my hearing loss as a disability but, I do now. This is why I am passionately advocating for the need of the hard of hearing community, to see your lips when you talk to us. The wearing of masks is impacting more people than I think people realise, according to RNID Statistics 1 in 5 people in the UK are deaf or have hearing loss.
Amy
Living with hearing loss is my website, and I’ve created it to help my community. The wearing of masks has, in many cases, caused a lot of distress for people. It’s made the navigation of everyday life exhausting; having to constantly battle for our needs to be recognised in this new situation. Because we rely on some form of lip reading/facial expression, with the mouth being hidden and the muffled sound that masks create, it poses a challenge. However, if people socially distance, or stand behind a screen, then the guidelines do say a mask can be temporarily lowered to allow people to communicate. However the problem is, people do not know this to be the case.
Many people I have spoken to have experienced some form of distress. A lady I have known for 20 years lives alone and has found that she hasn’t been able to understand what her carers are saying to her as they would not lower their masks to help her understand. Young professionals working in the NHS are being faced with the challenge of masks and the anxiety of not being able to communicate with their patients or colleagues. People working on the shop floor are having to deal with rude customers due to a lack of awareness. We can’t even order a coffee, if the person serving us doesn’t understand that it is ok to lower a mask, as long as we are separated by a screen, or standing a safe distance away from each other.
At the start of the pandemic as a stay-at-home mum I wasn’t directly affected by the wearing of masks, except in supermarkets. Then my husband and I made the decision that he did the food shopping and I stayed at home with the children. However, that changed as masks slowly became mandatory in other areas. The final straw was the day the headmaster wrote to the parents asking them to wear a face covering when collecting their children.
I messaged my mum-friends that day to explain that I wouldn’t be able to understand what they are saying if we have background noise and was reduced to tears. I then searched the internet for some kind of help. A badge; anything!!
In the end I phoned RNID and they sent me the link to the exemption card. This was September 2020.
The Government link for exemption card
I messaged my friends about the exemption card and explained that legally they are completely safe in lowering their masks to me as long as they socially distance. I realised as parents were lowering their masks, I needed to make the headmaster aware of my situation. He offered to print an article in the school’s newsletter to raise awareness of my situation and the exemption card.
From that article, the awareness raised was incredible. However, it highlighted two things.
1. Generally, people didn’t realise how it would affect the hard of hearing and deaf community, but once they did, they quickly wanted to help.2. People just weren’t aware of the exemption card.
With that I started the social media platform and launched a campaign: #clarityincommunication, to help all customer serviced businesses offer themselves as lip reading friendly, by raising their awareness of the exemption card. They get a poster, a booklet, with all the information, plus a badge saying “please let me know if you need to lip read me" kindly donated by Hearing link Charity.
All details are available at: www.livingwithhearingloss.co.uk