Or at least find out if hearing aids will help. If they won't (like with my hearing issues), you'll at least know.
If you're facing away from me and blurring all your phonemes into one giant conversational clusterfuck, then it is hard for me to hear you.
I do read lips (picked up randomly as a coping skill, so far as I can tell), and anyone facing away from me and mumbling has about as much chance of being understood as a fart has of being detected in a windstorm. I mean, I can pick up on the fact that they are emitting sound, but whether that is humming or mumbling to themselves or talking (and if so, that the talking is directed at me) is very hit or miss -- and I make those determinations based on other contextual clues. In that situation, I might hear part of one word and make a stab at what it was -- though I'm equally likely to hear "masturbate" and "defenestrate" for "demonstrate".
I guess what I'm saying is, please don't feel bad about speaking up if you need to. You don't have to outright claim disability as such if you're uncomfortable with that in a given situation. Just say that you "have a hard time hearing people completely" sometimes, and that you want to "make sure to understand what people are saying". People will get that message a good amount of the time.
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branchandroot
(no subject)
Date: 2008-05-29 04:20 pm (UTC)If you're facing away from me and blurring all your phonemes into one giant conversational clusterfuck, then it is hard for me to hear you.
I do read lips (picked up randomly as a coping skill, so far as I can tell), and anyone facing away from me and mumbling has about as much chance of being understood as a fart has of being detected in a windstorm. I mean, I can pick up on the fact that they are emitting sound, but whether that is humming or mumbling to themselves or talking (and if so, that the talking is directed at me) is very hit or miss -- and I make those determinations based on other contextual clues. In that situation, I might hear part of one word and make a stab at what it was -- though I'm equally likely to hear "masturbate" and "defenestrate" for "demonstrate".
I guess what I'm saying is, please don't feel bad about speaking up if you need to. You don't have to outright claim disability as such if you're uncomfortable with that in a given situation. Just say that you "have a hard time hearing people completely" sometimes, and that you want to "make sure to understand what people are saying". People will get that message a good amount of the time.