Someone brought up the topic of phone phobias on one of the cochlear implant facebook groups I belong to. When they said that I let out a huge sigh of relief because I was thinking…whew glad it isn’t just me!
Interacting with people face to face when you have hearing loss is tough enough. Adding the phone to the equation just adds to the stress. The good part is that hearing aids and cochlear implants are getting better and better all the time. They now come with features that make talking on the phone a lot easier. However, if you haven’t had an easy time with the phone for years, it is hard to shake that mindset.
I can hear on the phone okay. My hearing aid doesn’t handle my iPhone very well, but does well with a landline via the t-coil. There’s some kind of weird interference going on. It may be that my hearing aid doesn’t have a good way to shield the interferences. It is four years old, and hearing aid technology has gotten a lot better since then. The cochlear implant does fairly well, but it isn’t perfect yet because I am not hearing all of the pitches.
The increasing role of text based communication has made my phone phobia if you will, a lot worse. This week I emailed back and forth with my dentist office to make an appointment, set up a transportation request via email, and sent a message to my bank online. All of these are traditionally done via phone.
It is a catch-22 of sorts. Before text and email became the norm, I had to call people. I still didn’t like it, but there was no other option. Now I’m going to have to make an even bigger effort to use the phone when it is necessary.
I am very grateful to live in a world where the options of text or audio are so readily available. I hope to see more and more “call” or “email” options pop up. Text options knock down the communication barrier for the deaf and hard of hearing, and allow them to respond quicker and more efficiently.
I think the toughest phone conversations I’ve had in the past few years have been job interviews. You have multiple people who might be on speaker phone and in a noisy background. I think I remember someone was conducting the interview while in the car with their kids!
Offering an instant messenger option would solve this issue. They give the interviewee the chance to formulate an answer and check their spelling. It also provides an automatic transcript to refer back to later.
So, in short, making text based communication available whenever possible is the way to go. It puts everything in writing, prevents a lot of frustration, and is fast and easy.
The irony here is that I am legally blind, yet I rely so heavily on visual and text elements. My hearing is definitely my bigger disability in terms of how it directly impacts my daily life interactions.
