Radio and TV: Problems and strategies for the deaf and hard-of hearing

The problems

As technology has advanced, television and radio have become increasingly problematic for people with hearing problems. There are three reasons.

1. One reason is that so much is in stereo with all sorts of sound effects. Wonderful as these must be for people with normal hearing who can separate out the speech, problems with identifying the direction of sound result in all the sound blurring together so that speech becomes unintelligible.

2. A second problem is the apparent belief by those who put on the programmes that sound effects have to be loud to be enjoyed whereas whispered speech carries dramatic effect. As a result, people with sensitivity to sound sit with one finger on the volume control and the other on the mute button. I have actually worn out three controllers, while the original television was still working, just because of my excessive use of the volume control.

3. A third reason is that so many more channels are available. This 'quantity' is achieved at the expense of 'quality' by cutting out detail. Deaf people's ears miss enough 'sound detail' anyway without the broadcasters removing more.

My number one coping strategy for watching television: subtitles

Television has become many times more enjoyable for me since I discovered subtitles. I am fortunate that other members of my family seem to accept them, although I realise that not all hearing people would be as accommodating. Some hearing members of my family even use them without the sound, simply so as not to disturb others who are concentrating on something else, and some members of my family like them because they report that they don't always hear what is being said anyway - which says quite a lot about the quality of the broadcast sound.

I say that I 'discovered' subtitles because they do not show automatically but have to be switched on. In the case of the television that I use, this is via the DVD controller. (I almost never watch programmes live.) All the major TV channels are committed to providing subtitling as a matter of course and it is also available on quality bought DVDs. Sometimes I record a film on a 'minor' channel by mistake. Then when I come to watch it I feel really let down and often have to erase it unwatched.

Although I cannot get on with the subtitling on foreign films, it has surprised me to find that English subtitling for spoken English is quite different. I seem only to have to glance at the subtitles to fill in the bits of speech that I don't actually hear. It is as if my eyes and ears work together so that my brain doesn't distinguish between the two. That is the case with good subtitling, but subtitling is not always good.

My main annoyances with subtitles are:

1. Subtitles that transcribe speech which is live at the time it is being spoken, like on the national news programmes. The technology must be impressive but it is irritating and almost impossible to use because:

• The subtitles come up later than the spoken word and interfere with each other in my mind. Often by the time that they come up, the relevant picture has gone.
• The text 'jumps up' line by line as the speech progresses whereas we are all used to going to the next line ourselves when we reach the end of a line.
• The transcription of some words is often so wrong that it would be laughable if it were a laughing matter.

Personally I do not find that this subtitling is better than nothing. So for watching the programmes that use it, I have to rely on the less adequate other strategies - see below - which do not make use of subtitles.

2. Subtitles that paraphrase. For my type of hearing loss which is not complete, my ears and eyes work together and I am looking for keywords to support what I can hear.
3. Subtitles that show the voices of different actors in the same paragraph, ie without a line between. By the time, I have sorted this out, the scene has changed so I see no visual input and might just as well be reading a book. I like the practice - fortunately common but not universal - of showing the speech of different actors in different colours.
4. Subtitles that change so quickly that there is no time to read them, although I accept that this is dictated by the speed of the dialogue and is probably unavoidable. In practice it is surprising how seldom this happens.

Other coping strategies for television and radio

My other strategies are less helpful and so obvious that all deaf people probably use them anyway:

• I do not attempt to listen to a play on the radio because I cannot well enough distinguish the voices of the different actors.
• I do attempt to watch films on television because it is surprising how much one can pick up from the action alone. However, I never watch live: I only watch recordings. Then, when it is obvious from the action that something significant is being said, I press the pause button and ask someone to repeat for me, which obviously can't be done when watching live. If no-one is around, that's just too bad. Sometimes I keep replaying, but more often than not, it is no clearer to me next time round.
• I like radio documentaries where there is a single well-spoken presenter, but I do wish that the sound effects of the location could be less intrusive.
• Some programmes created specially for the World Service are easier to understand because the presenters make a point of speaking clearly for an audience whose first language is not English.