Home Safety Tips For People With Hearing Loss

If you have some hearing loss, there are precautions you can take and ways you can prepare to ensure you remain safe around your home and while out and about. Whether you need to update your alarms to newer models with more sensors or simply want to stay safer while driving, consider these simple tips designed with individuals who have hearing loss in mind.

Hearing Alarms 

When you think of an alarm, you think of a loud tone on your smartphone, clock or another device, but a loud tone is not very effective for people with hearing loss. Some conventional alarms might be effective for people with mild conditions, but in severe cases, a hearing alarm is needed. Instead of a sound, hearing alarms use a combination of sounds and flashing lights. 

Effective hearing alarms have strobe lighting that comes on and is unavoidable; even when someone is sleeping, the strobe lighting is effective at waking someone up. As well as alert alarms, it’s important to have fire alarms and carbon monoxide detectors optimized for hearing-impaired people.    

Personal Support 

If you are hearing impaired, it’s important that your friends, family and neighbors know about your condition. When people in your life understand your hearing difficulties, they can make allowances for you and help you to navigate your circumstances. In the case of friends and family, they might modify the ways they interact with you or their plans to make them accessible.

Friends and family are the first ones you should inform about a hearing condition. If possible, ask someone if they can accompany you to the shops or when navigating the local area, but it’s also a good idea to let people in the area know about your condition. One way to achieve this is to visit the same locations; another way is to wear a badge to show you have hearing issues.     

Driving Safety 

Hearing is an important factor when driving; although you don’t need to hear to drive, hearing can help with orientation, concentration and safety. For this reason, the best advice is to avoid listening to hand-free devices and even the radio when driving because of the distractions. If you have a hearing condition, it’s even more important to avoid these distractions when driving. 

Whether your hearing loss is mild or severe, you will want to reduce distractions in the vehicle and improve your safety. Don’t be afraid to tell your passengers to stop talking to allow you to concentrate, turn off the radio and avoid using the phone or your GPS system. If you need to change the route, pull over and adjust your GPS system to get on the correct road more safely.   

Forward Planning 

When you experience some hearing loss, you need to think a little more carefully about your lifestyle and your circumstances in the event of an emergency. All families should have some safety protocol in the event of disasters such as fires, earthquakes and tornadoes, but if you or a family member has a hearing condition, you need to make some additional plans for events. 

Talk to your family members about the worst-case scenarios and make a plan for where to find you after you have evacuated the home or the office space. But forward planning is not only useful in the case of an emergency; if you plan your everyday trips in advance, it makes them more predictable and easier. Think of all the challenges you might encounter to mitigate them. 

Treat Hearing Loss 

One of the best safety measures you can take is to become fully aware of your hearing loss and the best strategy for treating it. If you have mild hearing loss, you might only require communication to improve your quality of life and domestic safety, but more severe cases require a hearing device. Make sure your hearing device is updated, clean and working well.

Treating hearing loss means visiting your audiologist for a diagnosis and a device, but it also means looking after your device and arranging your environment to support better hearing. Hearing issues can be dangerous, especially if you can’t hear fire alarms or you drive with a hearing condition. However, you don’t have to live with limitations; you can take some action.

Homes can be dangerous places whether you have a hearing condition or not, but if you have a hearing condition, the risks are higher. Make sure you have appropriate alarms – ones that use flashing lights instead of sounds – and take care of a hearing device with proper maintenance. Ensure you are getting treatment for hearing loss by calling the professionals at Flynn Associates: Concord: (978) 759-3540, Wellesley: (781) 943-5040.