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How to Have Effective Communication with Hearing Impaired During Virtual Meetings

By implementing varied helpful features in assistive technologies, you can make the communication easier for everyone involved. These features include live captioning or subtitles and screen readers during web conferencing and video calls.

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How to Have Effective Communication with Hearing Impaired During Virtual Meetings

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  1. How to Have Effective Communication with Hearing Impaired During Virtual Meetings

  2. In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, virtual meetings have become a critical tool for employees around the world to communicate with their team members while working from home. Also, due to this uncertain situation, employees with hearing loss will have to experience new challenges of communication as most of them understand speech by reading lips and others use contextual clues reserved for in-person contact or rely on the support network of their friends.

  3. But with this uncalled situation, everything has just become a mess for the hearing impaired and working without contact becomes a new thing for them. In fact, it becomes even more problematic in case of frozen screen and crashes in video conferencing which necessitate the audio-mode. In such situations, hearing impaired people have to continuously adjust their hearing aid device to hear things clearer from the other end.

  4. So, what can be done to help build an inclusive environment for the hearing impaired?

  5. Besides, these ways can be followed to ensure an effective video meeting. First of all, it’s important to ask them about their hearing aid device; ask whether it is Bluetooth enabled. If the hearing device can be connected to laptops or cell phones via Bluetooth, hearing colleagues while communicating won’t be an issue. But in case, your employee uses a traditional hearing aid device, it’s your responsibility to fine-tune the video conference settings as per their convenience.

  6. Invest in Assistive and Accessible Technologies By implementing varied helpful features in assistive technologies, you can make the communication easier for everyone involved. These features include live captioning or subtitles and screen readers during web conferencing and video calls.

  7. Workarounds to get caption for Video Calls In case you don’t have access to live captions, there are workarounds. You can use a speech-to-text app on a second device like Google Live, Transcribe etc.

  8. Offer Assistance and Be Empathetic It would be helpful to understanding what your hard of hearing employees need in order to help them do their best. For example, it would be difficult for a hearing-impaired individual to understand others during video conferencing, especially when the network is poor, or team members’ speech collides. Be sure to ask them how they prefer to communicate, through online text chat or text message or email.

  9. Also, the hard of hearing needs to speak up and be honest about their needs to others. This is because it’s important to let everyone know about the challenges one experiences during video conferencing, so that others can provide helpful hints when possible to make the communication process more seamless.

  10. Encourage Everyone’s Participation Call on anyone who hasn’t participated in a while to make sure their needs are heard, and they don’t feel left out in a new working set up.

  11. Provide Written Follow up When a meeting ends, be sure to send everyone a follow up with a written document of the key points discussed in the meeting.

  12. With so many people with hearing loss working in the workforce, it is critical to have everyone’s participation in building an inclusive environment for those with hearing challenges, especially in this climate of remote work.

  13. Besides, keep these tips in mind when using video calling apps so those with hearing loss don’t feel left out.

  14. Keep the camera steady and your face closer to the camera. Avoid a too dark or too bright background. Shadow can make lip reading difficult. Sit somewhere quiet with the fan off. Fast bandwidth and strong video quality are essential for having a seamless experience. Only one person should speak at a time. Mute the screen when you are not talking and share the same with other team members also. Utilise the text feature for questions.

  15. These are a few ways an organisation can help their hearing-impaired employees. Also, while you are doing your bit to make the communication hassle-free for the hard of hearing, be sure to ask them to invest in quality hearing aids that offer Bluetooth connectivity, to be able to connect the hearing device with other smart devices.

  16. Fortunately, some Adelaide hearing clinics are still working during these difficult times to provide the best hearing aids to the people in need. Get in touch with them to buy hearing aids of any reputed brand.

  17. Contact Us Hearing Aid Specialists SA • Address: 6 Grenfell Street Kent Town , S.A. , 5067 • Phone: 08 8362 6099 • Fax: 08 8363 3444 • Email ID: reception@hassa.com.au • Website URL: http://www.hassa.com.au/

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