Hacker News Reader

Comment by _m8fo | Hacker News Reader

It's so sad that we're still culturally at a point where people care so much what others think in terms of their appearance. I mean if someone is, god forbid, hearing impaired and are wearing a hearing aid (oh, the horror), what's the big deal? I agree with rhubarbcustard in that an nigh invisible earpiece will probably have a superior overall function, but I wish people would stop the judgment.

On that note, I'd like to see extremely visible hearing aids, that way it signals to me to speak in a way that makes myself easier to hear, stigma be darned. I'm sure anyone reading this has had experiences not hearing someone because of a bad environment or mumbling, or something else. Ideally, if you see that someone is wearing a hearing aid you would pay respect to that and go even further out of your way to make sure they can hear you (though, you should do that for everyone really).

View on HN

As somebody who grew up wearing hearing-aids, the real world is unfortunately nothing like what you describe especially with younger kids (although I agree it would be lovely).

Also, you might want to tone down the mocking just a notch (that, or I'm reading too much into your tone, possibly due to my experiences).

Kids will mock you, or try to yank on them. Or when you lose them, it's funny. I used to use behind-the-ear ones, and then switch to in-the-ear aids, to be less visible.

In the words of Mark Twain - "Human beings can be awful cruel to one another".

Now that I'm older, I tend to only use them in a work context - in social settings, I tend to prefer 1:1 meetups anyhow, which makes it easier (you can lip-read easier if it's just one person at close range).

For work, people are professional, and you can trust that it's fine. And look, honestly as an adult, you assume other adults are reasonably mature and won't judge you just because you have a disability. But yeah, for children, that unfortunately doesn't always hold true.

I've actually switched to behind-the-ear again - simply because the sound quality is better, in particular the directionality.

> I've actually switched to behind-the-ear again - simply because the sound quality is better, in particular the directionality.

I just switched from behind-the-ear to inside-the-ear and one of the benefits for me is the directionality. With behind-the-ear, I was unable to precisely locate some sounds and what was happening behind me was always "clearer" that what happened in front of me (annoying in the restaurant where you can follow conversations from another table, but not from yours).

Ah, I apologize. My intention was not to mock or patronize. I'd edit the post to make that more clear, but unfortunately I'm no longer able to edit.

If you grow up as a schoolchild with hearing aids, you will have a very different view regarding visibility. You can't hear right, you (probably) speak funny, and now you have this.... THING.. sticking out of your body, right at eye level, which is just ripe for other kids -- not even bullies, just other normal kids -- to tease and use as a differentiator when creating social groups.

Kids can be evil and I got teased a bit too when I was at school. I've never experienced a negative reaction to my hearing aids as an adult though. Missing what someone has said has caused problems when they've maybe thought I was being rude and ignoring them or they said something and I answered with completely the wrong thing. So, I think as an adult not being able to always hear has caused reactions in people but not the visible hearing aids themselves.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com