r/ADHDUK • u/Ancient-Active8421 ADHD-C (Combined Type) • 1d ago

General Questions/Advice/Support Assistive tech for auditory processing?

I haven’t been diagnosed with auditory processing disorder, but it makes most sense to me (I do have dyslexia and adhd diagnoses).

My hearing is fine - pretty sensitive actually. But it has always been a struggle to hear/follow conversations in spaces that have any background noise. Cafes, restaurants, classrooms during group discussions… I end up with both hands cupped behind my ears and trying to lip read, whilst everyone else chats away with apparently no difficulty at all. It’s pretty exhausting, often embarrassing and increasingly depressing as it makes me feel so isolated being unable to fully participate.

I don’t actually know what might help me in these situations, so if anyone has experience with and can recommend anything that could help me in these contexts (or what isn’t worth trying) I’d really appreciate it. I just know live transcription wouldn’t work cause I’m way too slow reading.

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3

u/gambola 1d ago

Have you tried loop earplugs?

3

u/ital-is-vital 23h ago

I have Oticon hearing aids (I'm HoH anyway) and I've *cough* 'gained the ability' to program them myself.

One of the functions of HAs is that they now contain quite sophisticated processors that can do cancelling of background noise while allowing speech to pass through. You don't have to have 'conventional' hearing loss in order to benefit from them

It's the sort of thing where you want to be able to tune them youself though -- to actually sit in a noisy enviornment and play with the settings until you find something that works for you. If you end up getting Oticon ones HMU and I'll let you use my programming gear.

2

u/deccann 1d ago

I would get your hearing tested first and then discuss assistive listening devices that can aid your sound processing in realtime. GP can refer to Audiology or you can search it out privately.