March 3rd is World Hearing Day

Protect your hearing because society won’t accommodate Deafness

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Hearing Awareness Week

March 3, 2025 is world hearing day, and March 3–9, 2025 is hearing awareness week. I’m all for protecting your hearing, getting your hearing checked regularly, and taking care of your auditory health.

The issue for me is that, instead of accommodating Deaf and Hard of Hearing (HoH) people, we generally expect Deaf/HoH folks to adapt to meet the communication needs of the majority hearing population with little or no effort made to consider diverse needs. To be clear, I’m speaking primarily about these issues on a systemic level, not an individual basis.

The technological advances made over the past 15–20 years are impressive, and I’m sure they help a lot of people experience improved accessibility and facilitate communication, exactly as it should be. That said, these tools are just that — tools. They should be used to augment, support, and improve accessibility, but they do not and cannot replace essential accommodations.

A person who uses a cochlear implant or wears hearing aids may have improved hearing compared to when they’re not using them, but these devices are merely assistive, they do not give a person full hearing. Every single Deaf/HoH person’s audiological profile is different; our hearing levels and ranges will vary. Each person’s experience with hearing aids will also vary, and how much we can actually hear will differ from one individual to the next.

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It shouldn’t (still) be this hard

Speaking of technological advances, why tf does every single business in every developed nation still not provide accessible options in 2025? We can shop and bank online — we spent months (some of us years) learning and working from home — but try to renew your license, or watch a movie in a theatre, and you’ll quickly discover how many (completely unnecessary) barriers remain.