AUDITORY: low hearing & deafness

I have an auditory disability, an impairment that is not immediately noticeable. At home, I am comfortable in my private spaces, which are adapted to my needs. When I go out, I do not necessarily feel challenged by physical thresholds when I need to reach or enter buildings. I do not experience such difficulties in trying to get somewhere as some people with other disabilities might experience. The most difficult and challenging part for me is something very quotidian: communication. I feel the difficulties that come with a loss of communication and social contact with others, accompanied by the anxieties and fears of the stigma of not hearing. Social contact is more difficult and not as fluent as for most people. It often gets very tiring because people do not always notice that I have a disability. They might not understand why I do not respond to them when they talk to me. I suppose they might think that something is wrong with me, when in reality I am just minding my own business. When I go outdoors, often someone is with me. This is not to help with architectural thresholds or challenges, but it is important for conversations and social contact in general.

Easy access to information is important to me, of course. If information is readily available, this means that I don’t need to ask around for it. An auditory disability is not something you recognise on someone’s face but it does come up quickly during social contact with other persons and in conversations. For me, the less I need to expose myself as a person with an auditory disability, the more comfortable I feel. So signalisations and directions should be easily visible, clearly defined and logical.

Because I have an auditory disability, I rely a lot more on visual cues and information. Not only in the manner of signs or pictograms, but also in the way I can use shadows and changes in lighting to distinguish whether a person is nearby. For example, when trying on clothes in a shop it is important for me that the curtain or door of the fitting room does not reach all the way up or all the way down. In that way, I can still distinguish whether someone is standing nearby and possibly asking questions or checking if everything is OK. It could become a socially awkward situation if I do not have this information about my surroundings.

The architecture of a space has a tremendous influence on social contact in my case. Visual cues and the visibility of faces and things is important. When I need to converse with people at a service desk or in the office or anywhere else, it is important to me that I can clearly see their faces and their facial expressions. How people are saying things often tells me more than what they are saying. I need to be able to see their eyes, their expressions and also their lips, so that I can read them. I need to see others and have eye contact with them to be able to communicate. I like to stand close to people, but not too close. Two metres is ideal. Whenever I need to look away from someone’s face to look at someone or something else, then I have missed a great deal of the conversation already. So when I am around more than one person, I like to be able to see their faces simultaneously. You can imagine that this becomes difficult in a crowded and noisy restaurant, for example, when I am on the long side of a rectangular table and everyone is conversing with each other and turning their heads. I would like to be more included in conversations. A round table, for example, would make me feel more as part of the group and that makes the situation much more comfortable for me.

I do not always notice that people are saying things to me when I do not see them, and I do not hear people approach behind corners or doors. So for me, the use of glass and other see-through materials is paramount to social contact and communication. The more I can see a person’s facial expressions and body language the better. When I am in front of a person or if I am in a room with someone and I am facing the light or a window in such a way that the person’s face is a bit shadowed, then this makes the conversation a lot more difficult and tiring for me. So the orientation of things in the room in relation to the light sources makes a definite difference as well. When I enter a room, I like the desks and people to be immediately visible to me, not behind corners or in darker parts of the room. I do not like being surprised or startled by unexpected things in my surroundings.

final important element of a space or building are the acoustics. Persons with auditory disabilities are not always completely deaf. Sometimes, to describe or know a person as deaf is not entirely correct. Sounds and articulations might still be audible, but good acoustics can make the difference between being enabled or being disabled by your environment. This in turn makes social contact either something enjoyable or something tiring and frustrating. The acoustics of a space can change by the height of the ceiling, the materials of the ceiling, the materials of the walls and of the floor. Also the way rooms are decorated, whether there are curtains or other sound absorbing and sound directing features influences the acoustic feel of the room. When good acoustics come together with good lighting and visibility, then social contact becomes much more fluent and my trips outdoors can become great successes.