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Should we speak LOUDER!! to deaf people?

Most people with normal hearing tend to think that deafness is all about sound not being loud enough. Provided that it is sufficiently amplified - so they think - any hearing problems will simply disappear.

Obviously, it is true that a sound does have to be loud enough for a deaf person to hear, but, all too often, that is only part of the problem. This is why there are pages on understanding needs and other issues in the 'Hearing Problems' menu.

There are points worth making concerning the volume of sound, though. When a deaf person is asked if they 'can hear', they probably say that they can, because they are aware that speech or music is going on. However they often lose the thread of what is being said. The reasons can be that people tend not to speak consistently at the same volume. They may drop their voices at different parts of a sentence or for the operative words that give the meaning.

Deaf people often 'hear' the speech as a jumble of incoherent words, as if it were a foreign language. because speakers often 'swallow' the beginnings and ends of words (the consonants). Then all that is 'heard' are the middles of the words (the vowels) which are highly ambiguous, as so many different words have the same vowel sounds. 

Speakers do not only alter the volume of their speech for different parts of a sentence, they also alter the pitch which is considered separately on another page. So what may be loud enough for a deaf person at one pitch may not be at another pitch. 

If volume levels at various pitches are the only problems, digital hearing aids can work wonders.

How to help

1. Do make sure that your speech and, if possible, that of others is adequately loud. This may mean reminding others in a group because the deaf person may think that it is inconsiderate to "keep on" about their own problems. Or of course the deaf person may be embarrassed if you speak for them. So some negotiation in advance may be in order.
2. 'Adequately loud' means projecting your voice and is not the same as shouting. Shouting always comes across as aggressive, and will make a deaf person feel even worse. Voice projection is a skill which all stage actors have to acquire and you may need to practise it.
3. As the position of the deaf person relative to whoever is speaking can make all the difference as to whether their voice sounds loud enough, do be considerate about this. (With my type of hearing loss, I always like to sit in the front row in talks and other presentations. That way I usually hear speakers, unless they move around, although I almost never hear the questions from the back of the room. I also like to sit in the middle of a group rather than on its edge.)
4. See the other pages in the Hearing Problems menu, to alert yourself to the fact that speaking loudly is not all that a deaf person needs in order to understand you.

Technical note

Although the level of a sound, its loudness, its intensity and its volume are generally taken to be the same thing by the general public, technically there are differences between them. These differences are of no importance in developing coping strategies for the deaf but, for the record, the loudness of a sound can be recognised by the height of its sound wave (its amplitude) and intensity is measured numerically by the square of the amplitude.

How to understand shouting from a deaf person's point of view

People with good hearing can get some understanding of the part that loudness, amplification and shouting play in deafness problems:

1. Imagine that your sight is not perfect and that you are trying to read a book in poor lighting conditions without your glasses. Improving the lighting, would probably help somewhat, but would it make sense for the light to be made brighter and brighter on the assumption that once it was bright enough you would be able to see properly? Of course not. Similarly increasing the amplification of sound may help a deaf person to some extent, but for most hearing problems, that alone is not enough. In fact just as turning up the brightness of lighting can cause headaches and discomfort, so turning up the volume of sound can cause pain and distress.

2. Ask someone to listen to you while you say something loudly or shout. Do they think you are sounding aggressive? Voice projection may need to be practised.