What does Hard of Hearing Friendly mean?

As you’ve probably by now noticed, there are places that I’ve recommended as hard-of-hearing friendly. I feel like I need to address this topic, as going forward, I would like to include more of such places, and speak about them so that you can check it out too, when you visit these locations.

So what does it mean?

The thing is the term “HoH Friendly” means something different to every individual out there who is HoH to a lesser or greater degree. I will not attempt to explain what “Deaf friendly” means because I do not feel that I can speak to this subtopic, as it is not part of my experience.

So I attempt to explain what the term “HoH friendly” means to me. My criteria for HoH friendly places:

• Sound
• • quieter: I like to have a normal conversation where I can hear everything being said to me, whether I wear hearing aids or not.  If I do wear hearing aids, I prefer that it doesn’t give me a headache.
• • No Echo. I like places that do not reverberate with sound–such that it sounds like the noise is bouncing between walls
• Ease of communication
• • staff that understand and are accepting of me writing things out, or even typing them on the phone is huge plus.
• • having accessibility to information in a visual way–screens, papers, lots of written plaques that explain things.

As you can see, I don’t really need a lot for it to be hard of hearing friendly. What is your definition? Let me know in comments below!