Social consequences for people with hearing loss

The inability to communicate easily and the inability to hear normally may affect the hearing impaired person in many aspects of daily life.

Barriers to work caused by communication difficulties can be significantly overcome by adequate and appropriate forms of communication support at work to access facilities and services and as far as reasonably possible to live a normal life, including social life, undertaking recreational, religious and cultural activities.

Communicating with a hearing impaired person may require more effort and input, especially if the hearing impaired person relies on lip reading, signing such as in BSL, or writing notes. The person may require communication support from a third party, for example a BSL interpreter, lipspeaker or speech to text reporter.

The hearing impaired person may experience increased difficulties with social activities and relationships, and that may lead to feelings of loneliness, isolation and depression.