How To Help
Here are recommendations from a variety of experts on how you can help hearing-impaired clients and yourself, if you suffer from the condition:
• Repeat or paraphrase important points as you make them.
• Provide a written summary or follow-up information to your discussion.
• Speak louder and clearer than normal.
• Talk face-to-face so the hearing-impaired advisor or client can understand better by watching the speaker’s face move and see the expressions.
• Have conversations a quiet place. In a restaurant, obtain a table away from the height of the noise.
• The best distance for communication is three to six feet.
• Use visual clues to emphasize a message such as touching the arm of a hearing-impaired client, knocking on the table, flashing the lights or waving your hand; then wait for a response.
• Be sure a hearing-impaired client is looking at you before you begin to speak.
• If you wear a mustache, consider trimming it so your lips can be seen easily.
• Speak and enunciate clearly.
• Make eye contact and only talk when facing the client.
• Keep pencils, hands or other items away from your face so your lips can be seen.
• Speak in a low pitch.
• Point, touch or use other non-spoken ways of communicating.
Think you may have a hearing impairment?
The possibility is strong enough that you should get a definitive opinion from a primary care physician, an otolaryngologist, an audiologist or a hearing aid specialist if you can answer yes to three or more of these questions, advises the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communications Disorders (NIDCD) :
• Do you sometimes feel embarrassed when you meet new people because you struggle to hear?
• Do you feel frustrated when talking to members of your family because you have difficulty hearing them?
• Do you have difficulty hearing when someone speaks in a whisper?
• Do you feel restricted or limited by a hearing problem?
• Do you have difficulty hearing when visiting friends, relatives, or neighbors?
• Does a hearing problem cause you to attend religious services less often than you would like?
• Does a hearing problem cause you to argue with family members?
• Do you have trouble hearing the TV or radio at levels that are loud enough for others?
• Do you feel that any difficulty with your hearing limits your personal or social life?
• Do you have trouble hearing family or friends when you are together in a restaurant?
Hearing loss, in and of itself, isn’t a high-volume issue for regulators beating the drum about elder financial abuse.
However, hearing impairment is a risk factor for dementia that regularly sets the stage for exploitation.
Typical hearing doubles the risk while a severe case increases the chances of getting dementia are fivefold, according to Alzheimer’s Association Director of Scientific Programs and Outreach Keith Fargo.
Part of the connection, said Fargo, is the embarrassment over poor hearing can lead seniors to become isolated, to avoid contact.
He noted animal studies have shown hearing loss shrinks the brain.
“Something similar may be happening to humans,” said Fargo.