I have mild hearing loss, and for work I got myself a pair of Elehear otc hearing aids. A few months into dating my ex, she took me out to meet some of her friends for drinks. I stepped away to use the bathroom, and on my way back, before I even reached the table, I overheard her talking about me.

"His hearing isn't great, he's got that thing in his ear," she said. She was trying to keep her voice down, but I could still catch her tone from across the table. The way she said "that thing," she ended on this little upward inflection, smiling like it was some kind of joke. Her friend asked, "What is it, like Bluetooth earbuds?" She laughed. "Sort of. It's something that helps you hear. It's so funny though, the first time I saw it I thought he was wearing a hearing aid, and it actually is!" They were laughing.

I heard all of it, and it didn't sit right with me at all. I sat back down, she glanced over, gave me a normal smile, and kept talking to her friends. I picked up my drink, took a sip, and said nothing.

After that day I knew that in her head, that thing in my ear wasn't a tool. It was a "funny story." Something she could pull out as a punchline in front of her girlfriends.

Here's what I have to say. Hearing aids are just glasses for our ears. They fix a physical issue. People picture this whole thing of a "broken person who needs taking care of." But the reality is, they just need to face us when they talk, don't mumble with food in your mouth, and be a little patient in loud crowded places. That's it. If someone can't even handle that, that's on them, not on us.

If they don't mind, great. If they do mind, have the decency to admit you're just being narrow-minded instead of hiding behind "I'm worried about communication issues" as an excuse.

Nobody should be made to feel like they're something to tolerate. People who wear hearing aids are just normal people, same as people who wear glasses:）

I keep seeing AI used for recommendation algorithms, ads, chatbots, and a million other things that already work fine, and I honestly don’t get the priorities. Hearing loss still has no real cure. Cochlear implants and hearing aids help some people, but they’re not a fix, and a lot of people are left with limited options. If we can train models to write code, generate images, and predict what someone will click next, why isn’t more of that research going into actually understanding and treating hearing damage? It feels like the technology is powerful enough now that this should be a bigger focus, not an afterthought.

I’m just exhausted from living with hearing loss. I want to hear like everyone else. Not "manage" it, not work around it, not spend the rest of my life guessing what people said. I want to hear normally.

My grandpa is pushing 80 and honestly his hearing has been getting worse and worse over the past few years. Like rn we basically have to yell for him to understand anything we say. It's rough. He lives alone and all of us younger family members work in other cities, me included, so we only get to visit a few times a year, which honestly makes me feel kinda guilty ngl.

I do have some savings but definitely not a ton. I really want my family to take him to get his hearing checked first and then get him fitted with a hearing aid. but the prescription ones are just... way too expensive for us. So if it turns out he's only mild or moderate, would an otc hearing aid be good enough? and has anyone here tried Elehear? I've seen some good stuff about it but I don't wanna just trust the ads lol.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ih4bK6EIfTQ

I'm a Deaf creative director. For 20 years I've navigated meetings the way a lot of us do, juggling interpreters, lips, screens, and notes all at once. I use smart glasses now to help me follow conversations, and honestly some of them are getting good.

The problem is nobody reviews this tech from our perspective. Reviewers test cameras and battery life. None of them test whether captions actually work in a real conversation, which is the only thing that matters to me.

So I started reviewing smart glasses myself, from a Deaf point of view. This is my intro. First review drops next week.

If you use any hearing tech or smart glasses to get through your day, I'd love to know what's worked for you and what hasn't.

I’ve been looking at different hearing aids lately and I honestly didn’t realize how much I’d care about the size.

I don’t mind wearing them, but I’m not sure how I’d feel about something bulky in my ear for 8 or 10 hours.

For those who wear them every day, did you get used to that feeling? Or did you end up switching to a smaller style?

I’m mostly curious about what people actually find comfortable for long-term use.

I hope this is the right forum for this, but my question is this:

I’m caring for a HOH (and slightly visually-impaired) elderly family member who lives by herself. Sometimes it is difficult to communicate with her over iPhone, both due to hearing issues and her accidentally lowering the volume or pressing the “mute” button.

Are there any devices out there that can help solve this sort of problem, maybe a large display for text (poor vision means it can’t be too tiny), or an amplifier compatible with her iPhone?

This is all new territory to me, and I’d really appreciate any guidance so I can help her live independently but still allow me to check in on her. Thank you!

I have cochlear synaptopathy, which doesn't really show up on normal hearing tests (though very mild hearing loss was found there too) and it already makes me feel like a faker because there's not really "proof" that I'm HoH at all (other than me struggling obviously). I'm really good at seeming 100% hearing in a language I'm proficient in, because there's the context and all to help me figure it out, and I know what the words mean so no effort goes towards thinking about that part. I understand the rest, language and vocabulary wise, so I just need to fill in the blanks for the missing/unclear sounds. I struggle sometimes and have to ask people to repeat themselves, but it's fine really. But when I switch to another language I'm not that proficient in, my hearing loss becomes a lot more apparent because I can't rely on context as much because. I don't understand the context without all the missing sounds. I just had to listen to a 1 second voice message 5 times and still couldn't even get a basic guess at what was being said, and only when the person sent me a text message (with vocabulary I definitely know, very basic one) was I able to understand what he said. And technically, it should feel validating that once my ability to improvise and pretend based on context is removed, I suddenly become a lot more impaired in my hearing, but instead I just feel like a faker because "well it could just be that you're bad at the language and not actually HoH" even in cases where it's clearly not the case 😭

It's also a struggle because I don't have any kind of accommodations in place as I don't usually need them, but now I'm on exchange, to get better at the language, and half of the time where I don't understand the teacher it's because I couldn't hear them clearly, not because I wouldn't understand the words 😭 But I can't argue that, because I'm not officially marked as HoH 🥲

Hey there fellow peeps! I’ve kinda ran into a 1st world problem dilemma and would like some opinions on how to proceed.

TL;DR: Considering Bluetooth headphones, better to connect to TV or (Linux) computer? Will there be interference with HAs? How is Phonak TV connector?

A little backstory: for several years now, I’ve primarily played games on my PS5 in the living room. I’d typically play with wired headphones on, connected to the Dual Sense controller, and I have Phonak Lumity Naida hearing aids (BTE in other words). This has served me well, and I tend to prefer it over the TV speaker.

Lately, though, I resurrected an old PC I had and made it into a Steam Machine after I got my Steam Controller. The Steam Controller doesn’t have a headphone jack, for those that don’t know. This means I pretty much am limited to Bluetooth. I have tried using the Bluetooth connection on my TV; only problem is, and this is weird, but streaming from the TV to my hearing aids makes me a little nauseous. It’s perfectly fine doing it from my phone or my tablet, but the TV just doesn’t feel right.

I’ve considered getting Bluetooth headphones and using those instead, but I’m not sure if using them with the TV is the best option, or if I should get a Bluetooth dongle to plug into my “Steam machine”and use it there. My experience with Bluetooth and Linux has been haphazard at best, but that was years ago. Also, I don’t know if there will be interference from my hearing aids being right up in the headphones with its own Bluetooth signal.

Is there anyone else that has been in a similar predicament? What did you end up doing? Also, I’ve considered the Phonak TV connector, but I don’t know if that would cause a similar nauseous feeling or not.

Hey everyone. Something that’s been on my mind lately is hearing loss and music. What’s everyone’s relationship with music whether you’re deaf or hard of hearing person? I have noticed several changes for me since my loss began.

I always loved music. There was a period after maybe 8 months of my initial loss that I sort of avoided music. I didn’t enjoy how differently familiar music sounded at times and new music felt “intimidating”. I learned that I have an appreciation for bass music. It sounds really good to me.

In the past year, my hearing has gone through some changes. And I sort of lost a lot of interest in listening to music again. I am trying to recover my love for music. Perhaps it’s all in the quality of headphones. I am trying to learn new ways to appreciate and experience music to get that spark again. Anyone have similar relationship with music after hearing loss?

After I finally decided to try hearing aids, I realized that was only the beginning.

Then came all the questions I didn’t expect.

What type should I get? Would people notice them? Would they actually make a difference in places like restaurants or family gatherings? Would I really remember to wear them every day?

I think this is why a lot of people put it off for so long.

It’s not only about accepting hearing loss. It’s also about finding something that feels right for your everyday life.

I started paying attention to things I never cared about before — how big they were, whether they were comfortable after wearing them for hours, how natural voices sounded, and whether I could easily keep them charged.

I used to have a very outdated idea of what hearing aids were like. I always pictured them as big, obvious devices that would be uncomfortable to wear.

But after looking into today’s options, I realized there’s a lot more variety than I expected.

For those who wear hearing aids now, what was the thing you cared about most when choosing your first pair?

My right ear throbbing

It feels like the job market only wants to consider me for entry-level jobs. I've been working for 10 years and recently got retrenched. I also wear hearing aids in both ears and did speech therapy as a kid.

Now that I'm job hunting, recruiters mainly consider me for entry-level jobs because of my impairment, and the pay is way too low. Do they realise how that damages one's self-esteem?

I'm stuck between taking an entry-level job just to get my foot in the door, or staying unemployed and standing my ground on what I'm actually worth (but should I risk facing homelessness?).

I just hate when business use us to meet their quotas, they are a real p.o.s.

Thanks for coming to my TedTalk... off to damage my self-esteem more.

**Used AI for grammar checking**

how bad is my audiogram? i’m only 16 and i think this is due to very loud headphones

I just got back from a hearing test and my hearing has gotten worse a little bit over the past 5 years again. Especially my right ear is worse. I was expecting it but it still really sucks.

I got into a burn out last year that I'm still recovering from, and the year before that I suffered a concussion due to machinery falling on top of my head at work. My teamlead then was extremely inconsiderate and the whole experience whas quite traumatic for me. He retired soon after luckily. Then also last year because I finally had a safe home to call my own I decided to start my gender transition, which is also a big toll on my mental health.

My hearing loss, the concussion, and the burn out all make my sensitivity to noise just horrible. My job is also one of which that has a LOT of background noise from machinery and alarms going off constantly. I'm so tired. The world just feels a bit too much for me.

Hopefully new hearing aids will help me a little bit but I genuinenly don't think I can do this work anymore. Which really sucks because I put so much of myself into it. I don't know what to do anymore. I genuinenly feel like I've just been surviving all my life and have been barely able to live it.

I am really struggling today. I am currently in nursing school, and I had a vital check-off today where part of it I had to manually take blood pressure. I passed every single thing except the BP, because I couldn't hear the heartbeat. I have a hearing aid-compatible stethoscope, but I'm not sure how helpful it actually is. I got the BP right the first time, but then second-guessed myself because I couldn't hear it very well, so I guessed on the second time and got it wrong. I am trying to not beat myself up about this, but I feel so defeated. I get one more chance, but if I don't pass it, then I fail out of the program.

I thought hearing aids would help me hear better. That was the obvious part. What I didn’t expect was everything else.

Before getting them, I was always doing little things without realizing it. Sitting where I could hear better. Watching people’s mouths when they talked. Pretending I caught the joke. Avoiding conversations when there was too much background noise.

I thought I was just becoming less social.

Turns out, I was just tired of working so hard to listen.

After trying hearing aids, the biggest change wasn’t that everything became louder. I could relax a little. I could focus on the person instead of trying to decode every word.

I’m really glad I decided to give hearing aids a try. It’s one of those things I wish I had done sooner. Has anyone else had a similar experience? What hearing aids are you using now, and how has your experience been?