Accommodating Hearing Impaired Audience Members

When we are given an opportunity to address a group, we spend a great deal of time preparing what we are going to say and how we are going to say it. This is all well and good, but we may be forgetting one critical factor: our audience may not be able to hear us speak.

Why Can’t They Hear Us?
Rick Moore is a professional freelance writer and public speaker, and he knows a great deal about this
because he has hearing loss and this has caused him to study audiences. He points out that in the U.S. there are 26 million people who have permanent hearing damage. What are the odds that one or more of them will be in your next audience?

Rick notes that as though this wasn’t enough, there are another 12 million people who suffer from
tinnitus – a constant ringing in the ears. Put these numbers together and clearly you need to change
the way you’ve been speaking in order to accommodate this portion of your audience.

Ways A Public Speaker Can Be Heard
There are a number of things that you can start to do as a public speaker in order to better meet the
needs of the members of your audience who have hearing problems. These include:

Room Awareness:
We are probably already aware of the lighting and the microphone setup – now
we need to become aware of the acoustics. The key here is to pick a spot to stand at that you will be
able to be easily heard from everywhere in the room.

Speak Up!:
This one is pretty obvious, but it’s an important point – in order to be heard by
your audience you are going to have to project your voice. Quiet whispering won’t cut it – make sure
that you are speaking to be heard in the back of the room.

Practice Age Discrimination:
No, not the bad kind – the good kind. Take a look at your audience – what does their average age appear to be? The older the audience, the greater the possibility that some members will have hearing problems. This means that you need to be extra vigilant in keeping your volume up and using very clear diction.

Show ‘Em Your Lips:
Even if your audience members don’t read lips, looking out at them so that
they can see your lips moving while you speak, instead of down at your notes, will give them another
visual clue that will help them decode what you are saying.

Final Thoughts
These tips are a great way to address the general hearing needs of your next audience. However, as you are giving your next speech you may discover that someone in your audience appears to be becoming bored or disinterested. It could be because despite your best efforts they can’t hear you.

The correct thing to do in this circumstance is to adapt to the situation. Move closer to where they
are sitting, look directly at them more often, and use more pauses so that they can more easily
interpret your words.

Making sure that everyone can hear you helps you to better accomplish your goal as a public speaker:
changing lives for the better.

Questions For You
Have you ever tried to listen to a public speaker who was talking without a microphone or in a noisy
environment? How frustrating was this for you? Do you have any friends who have hearing problems? How do they deal with listening to public speakers? Have you ever been told to “speak up”?