Masks Pose Barriers for People With Hearing Loss: Here ’s a Novel Solution

Federal health officials are on the brink of recommending face coverings to help stem the spread of COVID-19, according to recent news reports. But masks and other face coverings muffle the wearers’ voices and prevent people from reading their lips, writes University of Florida graduate student Laken Brookes in a CNN article. For people who are hard of hearing, that’s a problem, she says.
Brookes, who has tinnitus, connected with a number of people with and without hearing challenges about communication problems related to masks. She notes that the fallback method—using a whiteboard passed back and forth—isn’t viable when you’re standing six feet apart.
Now Ashley Lawrence, a college senior studying deaf education, has come up with a novel solution: She is creating face masks using see-through fabric. A story on LEX18-TV in Lexington, Kentucky, quotes Lawrence as designing the mask for “anyone who uses speech reading, lip reading, anybody like that … and people who are profoundly deaf who use ASL as their primary mode of communication. ASL is very big on facial expressions and it is part of the grammar.”
Lawrence is sending the see-through masks free of charge to those who request them at [e-mail].
Meanwhile, the Deaf/Hard of Hearing Technology Rehabilitation Engineering Research Center published strategies for Deaf people to use when they navigate public or medical spaces, such as by downloading speech-to-text apps or preparing a wri...

Source: American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA) Press Releases - April 3, 2020 Category: Speech-Language Pathology Authors: Carol Polovoy Tags: Audiology Health Care Slider audiologist COVID-19 face masks Hearing Assistive Technology hearing loss Source Type: blogs