Sandra first noticed her hearing loss nearly 30 years ago and is now profoundly deaf in both ears. She knows how much workplace inclusion matters – and how simple actions can make a big difference.
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Sandra shares her experiences and advice for employers and colleagues below.
Are there times when colleagues and employers have been deaf aware in the workplace? What difference did this make for you?
“On my team, it’s just normal now. They know and they act without thinking. For example, captions are always automatically enabled when a Teams call is on the big screen, so I don’t have to ask. Leaving a seat at the table for me that’s in the best possible position for me to hear, so I don’t have to ask. Being an ally and asking others to adjust or accommodate when they can see that I’m not able or struggling to hear, so I don’t have to ask.
It really does help to take the onus off you all the time (which is exhausting) and helps you to feel somewhat normal. And it doesn’t take much effort on their part.
I was also at a panel based event once, where I was invited to do a five-minute talk on ‘Leading with a Disability’ and without me even asking, I had been allocated a seat at the front, and they had hired someone to live transcribe the speeches and panel discussions that were happening throughout the day. I mean, I can’t tell you how much that meant. Not just because I could actually follow what was being said (even the jokes), but because it was automatically done, no fuss.
The small things really do matter and make a huge difference.”
Are there times when colleagues and employers have been less inclusive? What impact did that have?
“My first experience of lack of inclusivity was a long time ago in a previous role. My hearing loss wasn’t profound back then and I hadn’t really disclosed formally that I was struggling with deafness. It was back in the day when we had office cubicles so you could only really see the tops of heads and people eyes. As you can imagine, this made it even harder to hear.
I struck up the courage to tell a colleague opposite me that I had hearing loss and couldn’t hear if I couldn’t see their face. They stood up and started speaking loudly, over pronouncing every word and it was just humiliating. I don’t necessarily think they meant it to be, but it had a huge impact on my confidence and I became incredibly introverted and withdrawn after this for many years afterwards.
Fast forward to today, and I’m certainly a lot more confident in speaking up about my hearing loss and helping people understand my needs, but exclusion, even unintended, still happens far more regularly than we realise.
My worst nightmare is someone coming up to me in the office and whispering something confidential, or lowering their voice because they don’t want it to carry. I try my hardest to lipread and gauge what they are saying through facial expression, but in the end, I always have to remind them that I can’t hear in those situations and it would be better to move to a focus room, or meeting room.
Equally, any form of joking or banter that happens around the office, I’m always excluded from – not on purpose, but because it’s too quick and people talk over each other and the laughter just make it impossible to keep up or know what’s being said.
You tend to become very good a just laughing along and pretending you’ve heard, or you just get your head down and pretend you are not really listening. Either way, it’s actually very lonely.”
What is the impact for you of colleagues and employers being deaf aware and inclusive?
“When colleagues and employers are deaf aware and inclusive, it tangibly reduces anxiety and stress. I can literally feel my shoulders drop and the knot in my stomach reduce. Because you live with that all the time, you become less aware of it until it physically reduces – only then do you realise how much tension you were holding.
If you are the one that always has to remind everyone that you are deaf and you need accommodations on top of having to lipread, try and fill in the gaps, work out who’s speaking in the room, and try and formulate your answer to the question that you only half heard, when someone makes something a little bit easier for you, without asking, it really does make a difference, both psychologically and physically.”
What advice would you give to employers or colleagues on how to be more deaf aware?
“For colleagues, please just ask what accommodations we might need, and then, importantly, remember them and do it again. It might feel a little awkward initially, and the recipient (because it probably doesn’t happen very often) might brush it off at first. But the more you do it, the more it becomes a normal part of conversation and the less contrived it becomes.
Be an ally and gently remind others so that the individual doesn’t have to be the one that does it all the time.
Remembering that inclusion and adjustments don’t just benefit those who are living with a disability, it benefits everyone. Employers should think about educating their people at onboarding stage, so it becomes the norm, not just something that an ECG (Employee Community Group) is responsible for promoting. Don’t just say, “Here is all the tech we have to support disabilities and neurodiversity, and here’s how to use it”. Change that to: “Here’s how we expect you to be behave inclusively – and here’s the tech we have in place to support that and how to use it.”
Sandra has previously shared her full story about living with hearing loss in the workplace and in everyday life. Read Sandra’s story here.
