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Social gatherings: Strategies for the deaf and hard-of-hearing

Social gatherings are particularly difficult for deaf people. There can be quite a number of distinctly different reasons, which all stem from the fact that groups are distributed around a room and are invariably all talking at the same time.

With unbalanced hearing (i.e without a sense of the direction of sound), the only way one voice can be distinguished from the others is by being louder, and the only way to make it louder is to move nearer the speaker. The situation often makes this impossible and, anyway, one can hardly keep bobbing about every time a new person starts speaking. Even assuming that it is possible to follow a particular conversation, it is very tiring indeed because of the interference from the other speakers, and - in my case - my sensitivity to sound.

People with hearing problems really can't follow a conversations for long in social gatherings and can't pick up on what a new group is saying and so make an entry for themselves. Consequently they are left feeling intensely isolated, inadequate and miserable. There are however a few guidelines that I have found helpful, which you may like to adapt for your own situation:

• Restaurant parties are an absolute no-no. People are packed tightly together, all talking and laughing, and, custom dictates that everyone is tied to a particular seat for the duration.
• A quiet visit to a restaurant with one or maybe two understanding friends or colleagues is possible at a time of day when the restaurant isn't busy. Ideally an open space (like a archway or open window) should be behind me: noise from in front seems more acceptable than from behind and an empty space doesn't reflect sound back the way that walls do.
• Drinks receptions are manageable if I hover on the outskirts, with an open area behind me or even just outside an open door.
• Garden parties are fine, and I can even enjoy them. Being out-of-doors there is no reflection from walls, and the general noise level is lower. Also I can move around and interact for just a few minutes at a time with small groups and can make my exit as soon as I need to, which is socially difficult in restaurants.

A few rather self-evident strategies grow out of these guidelines:

1. Be firm about the social situations in which you can and can't participate and if necessary explain them - although it is difficult to take people's time to explain fully.
2. If it feels right, direct members of the group in advance to the suggestions on this website - see the labels below - and in particular the problems of unbalanced hearing.