By Lauren A.
As a white woman with progressive hearing loss since birth, the forms of discrimination I always encountered were both overt and covert (for example, presuming I have a lower IQ and making work related tasks easier for me than for others, or presuming I don’t need any accommodations at all since I don’t look like I have a disability).
The color of my skin allowed me to do the majority of things without harassment, such as taking neighborhood walks at night, or keeping my hands in my hoodie pockets in a convenience store, undisturbed and unmonitored. Life was not without hiccups by any means, but with luck, my skin color, being able to afford hearing aids, the degree of hearing I did have, and accessibility to higher education, I could skate by. I was a proficient lip reader and unprofessional comedian, making the inevitable awkward situations when I misheard something into hilarious stand-up routines. These were compensation methods and survival techniques, to keep both my ego from completely deflating and to keep the conversation going so that I could salvage whatever bits of crucial information I missed.
Then Covid happened. Lipreading was essentially forbidden due to mask wearing, and public health and personal safety trampled my legal rights to hear and understand what was happening around me during medical procedures, banks, grocery stores, and everywhere else. Including at work. I found myself looking for a remote job.
The challenges of face masks during Covid pushed Lauren to seek out remote work.
I accepted a job offer at a relatively new startup in the tech industry selling hearing aids at the most affordable price for those with mild to moderately severe hearing loss, with sleek and ‘young’ marketing to boot. The interview was via Zoom, I could read lips, and my clinical background in audiology and speech pathology sealed the deal. I was relieved to be part of the industry that not only I understood, but understood me. They promoted the company culture of helping those with hearing loss with pride, eyes brimming with tears during sentimental customer testimonials at all-hands and hiring waves of people to fuel their expansion and growth. And their culture of “white tech” immediately began to show.
To be fair, the lack of diversity in the audiology and related industries as a whole is, well, very apparent. Which makes it understandable that the target market for this particular company was the “older, white man” (actual quote from the head of marketing) with financial means to spare. So a bunch of white, mostly male executives creating a company and product for a bunch of white, mostly male consumers makes sense from a business perspective.
However, the purpose of the company is to fulfill the needs of the 25 percent of Americans with significant enough hearing loss who need hearing aids by the age of 65. In reality, many demographic groups comprise the 25 percent of Americans in need of accessible hearing health care, and not all of them are white.
“White tech” culture continued to dominate beyond the selling of their product and telehealth services. A speaker with a graduate degree in public health and perfect hearing was brought in to discuss the health disparities that Deaf people face. Her parents were profoundly Deaf, and communicated via sign language. Statistics were presented that reflected disparities in access, resources, and delivery of competent and quality healthcare, the scarcity in competent sign language interpreters, and the lack of knowledge of sign language in general.
As soon as Lauren began her work-from-home job, the “white tech” culture of her company became immediately apparent.
I was perplexed in connecting the purpose of this presentation with that of this particular hearing aid company. The speaker mentioned her parents did not wear hearing devices, representing their personal choices, as well as their rebuttal to growing up “oral.” The parents were not invited to speak during this Zoom conference, nor were they representative of the average hearing aid consumer. Even if it was through their family member, the parents’ experience was filtered.
It was a futile attempt at education at best, and a dangerous boundary crossed at worst. If your mission in business is to sell your product, leave it at that. Mixing the company’s mission with ingredients such as altruism marginalizes those who have been discriminated against. Furthermore, it leaves the last impression that deaf/Deaf/hard of hearing persons need hearing people to speak on their behalf.
As I began to do my job, I realized I needed accommodations, such as closed captioning on client calls when they weren’t automatically available. This took time to achieve, which was understandable. What was not so understandable on their side, was when during a conference call for training, I could not simultaneously follow the captions of what they were saying and be on a different page or platform trying to figure out what it was they were saying.
Currently you can only see captions on the actual Google Meet page. So if another tab or screen is shown through “share screen,” the captions do not transfer to those other pages—they are only on the original Meet page. The sound was sometimes intermittent, making both captions and speech perception choppy. When I requested daily tasks and “hard rules” of the job to be put in writing, I was told that everyone was “too busy" for that, and not realistic since the department was in transition. Before one suggests that a non-virtual job would have been a better fit, let me remind you that I cannot successfully complete an errand since I cannot understand what people are saying behind a mask.
Where is one expected to seamlessly assimilate without detection, without changing their attributes, in order to ‘succeed’ in the mainstream workspace? I concluded that as likely as I am a disappointment to the company by not meeting their standards, the company deeply disappointed me. It was a mistake to presume that the hearing aid industry would have an informed, receptive attitude to employees with hearing loss. So I, and my spirit, resigned.
Meanwhile, I am trying to remain optimistic that we can safely return to not wearing masks, especially as this would ease the communication burden. For now, taking time off and letting things ride out seem like the best course of action for me.
Lauren A. lives in Atlanta.
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I do feel like something is lost when older adults are put into what feels like isolation chambers due to our hearing ability. We have something unique to contribute from the perspective of our years, and I would like us to find a way as a society to allow us to do that.