Masks can be a barrier for people with hearing issues

Masks being worn as a result of COVID-19 are creating barriers for communicating with those who are deaf or hard of hearing.

Amanda Motyer, chair of Peterborough’s Accessibility Advisory Committee, is deaf and uses lip-reading. Motyer recently had COVID-19 symptoms and had to be assessed at Peterborough Regional Health Centre (PRHC) by health-care workers wearing protective masks.

While Motyer was glad she tested negative for the illness, understanding health-care workers at the assessment centre wasn’t easy, since she uses a technique called speechreading.

Speechreading is a combination of using her residual hearing, lip-reading and guesswork, Motyer said, and it becomes challenging when a person’s mouth is obscured by a mask. Since she was not allowed to bring her cellphone into the assessment centre, Motyer couldn’t use her speech-to-text app.

Motyer said health-care workers used paper to write down their message and although that worked, it wasn’t ideal.

“I was feeling rather anxious about the whole experience, and I was definitely rather frustrated,” she said, adding it’s not always easy to read unfamiliar handwriting, especially when you’re feeling unwell and nervous. “Anyone obscuring half their face with a mask definitely affects our ability to communicate since we lose that source of information. It’s been said that deafness cuts people off from people, and masks will make that worse.”

Motyer was first diagnosed with hearing loss at age five. At the time, her hearing loss was mild-to-moderate and now it’s moderate-to-profound. She said it’s important to note that someone who is deaf uses sign language to communicate and considers themselves to be a part of the deaf community.

Meanwhile, someone who is deaf or hard-of-hearing is someone with audiologically measured hearing loss. Like Motyer, most people with hearing loss rely on facial expressions and lip-reading — at least to some extent — to help them understand speech. Even the deaf who use American Sign Language to communicate will encounter communication issues with masks since facial expressions are a key component of ASL, Motyer said.

She said the thought of being hospitalized with COVID-19 is terrifying because of the communication barriers she would face.

“I am very glad I did not test positive, as I imagine I would have had a lot more interactions with masked health-care workers,” she said.

Motyer said a portable whiteboard available to write on at the hospital would have helped her understand health-care workers, or perhaps there could be a safe way to use speech-totext apps in the assessment centre.

The issue has also affected many seniors in long-term-care homes, where staff are now wearing masks every day.

Niklas Chandrabalan, Extendicare’s regional director, said the masks muffle staff member’s voices for hard-of-hearing residents.

He said they’ve come up with strategies to make communication easier at Extendicare Peterborough and Lakefield: They use whiteboards, pen and paper, cue cards with graphics or hand gestures.

“It’s a case-by-case situation based on what the resident prefers,” he said. “Whatever helps to ensure we can hear from them and converse with them.”

Motyer said there is a lot of fear that people have with regards to COVID-19.

“For the deaf and hard-ofhearing, they have the fear of whether or not they’ll be able to communicate on top of the fear that everyone else has,” she said.

“It’s scary to be in a room surrounded by people in gowns and masks, and not being able to understand what they are saying to you makes that experience even scarier.”

Funded by the Government of Canada/Financé par le Gouvernement du Canada.