Through the Ears of Others: My Experience with the Starkey Hearing Loss Simulator

"Hearing Simulator Transcript Fading" by Kyra DeLoach is licensed under CC BY-ND 2.0.

I tend to think of myself as “hypersensitive”. Loud noises, bright lights, strong smells, and things like that are hard for me. I’ve worked on it over the years, and it has gotten more manageable. Hearing loss is not something I have had to experience, as it’s usually the opposite for me. I thought I would try the Starkey Hearing Loss Simulator and it was a very interesting experience.

On the website there are situations like Conversations, Meetings, Shopping, etc. I chose Shopping and was able to listen to a conversation between a customer and a cashier in four different levels of hearing loss: Normal, Mild, Moderate and Severe.

In the moderate situation of Shopping, I could hear what was happening but it sounded very muffled and jumbled. I could hear the total, but $27.60 could easily have been $27.16. I knew what the cashier was asking or telling me, but I didn’t hear every word. “Have a good day, it's a beautiful day outside” became “Have a good day. Beautiful day outside.” It was very choppy at moments, and hard to focus when more than one person spoke quickly.

During the mild situation, everything felt muted and muffled but I could hear the cashier clearer. I felt like I would have needed to be close to the cashier to hear her though. In normal, everything felt loud and the background noise was distracting and made it hard to focus compared to the other situations.

In severe, I was lost. It sounded like humming but the only thing I could make out was ‘Receipt in the bag?’ and “Thanks so much, have a great day” I would not have known the total to pay.

During the exercise, I tried to transcribe what I heard. The conversation moves quickly as is, but it’s even more difficult when the ends or beginnings of words are cut off or if there's more than one person talking at once. In each situation but Severe, I was able to make out the crucial parts: price, how to pay, questions, etc.

This exercise made me think about how I speak to others because as someone with hypersensitivity I tend to be soft spoken. It made me feel like I should work on how I communicate with others because I never know their level of hearing and want to make sure they understand me.I experienced empathy throughout this whole experience, but it really made me think about how others who struggle with hearing loss navigate the world. There are a lot of things I don’t have to concentrate hard on to understand when communicating with others, and I think if I needed people to repeat things it would make me feel bad and anxious personally. It just gave me a new perspective on others.

Doing this exercise puts it in perspective how things at events might feel overwhelming for my students who experience hearing loss. It makes me think towards the future of events and interactions and how I can make them the most successful moving forward.