- Masks can reduce speech clarity and increase the risk of losing hearing aids, especially behind-the-ear styles.
- Specific hearing aid features like “Face Mask Mode” and simple communication strategies can significantly improve understanding.
- Proper placement, retention tools, and audiologist support can help hearing aid users navigate masked environments safely.
No one could have fully prepared for the COVID-19 pandemic and what to expect afterwards. I can remember thinking that we would shut down for two weeks in order to help stop the spread of the virus, and we would return to our lives. Yet, here we are years later, continuing with some restrictions that at times fluctuate in severity of restrictions depending on your location and the active virus counts in your area.
Masks are the most common change that occurred during the pandemic that we still frequently see out in public and within healthcare. Although masks help protect us and others from airborne germs, they come with their own set of complications.
One of the most common is adding an additional item behind our ear, along with glasses, and sometimes hearing aids. We have watched hearing aid users struggle through the pandemic and want to provide some tips to help improve communication and keep your hearing aids safely in your ears.
How Masks Impact Hearing and Speech Understanding
Glasses and masks often do not affect one another, but hearing aids can easily get tangled within mask strings. Within the past two years, we have seen a significant rise in the number of lost hearing aids due to the removal of masks. Aside from losing expensive technology, masks themselves can interfere with the quality of speech.
Individuals with hearing loss heavily rely on visual cues and context to understand what others are saying. When wearing a mask, they can no longer rely on the movement of the speaker’s lips for input. Masks also significantly decrease the quality and volume of the signal. Cloth masks can attenuate anywhere between 4–12 decibels of sound.
To help combat these issues, people started wearing plastic clear masks or face shields to allow individuals with hearing loss to have visual cues once again. This plastic material only created a larger problem as it can attenuate up to 14 decibels of sound and often fogs and prevents visualization. The plastic also distorts the sound as it forces it to bend around the material, changing the characteristics of individual speech sounds.
If you are looking for the best mask to wear with the least effect on sound, you should use medical-grade or N95 masks, as they only attenuate on average 4–5 decibels of sound. Masks will always make understanding speech difficult, especially for individuals with hearing loss, but there are things you can do to overcome these listening obstacles.
Hearing Aid “Face Mask Mode” and Technology Solutions
Many hearing aid companies released something called “Face Mask Mode” during the height of the pandemic to help combat the sound attenuation created by masks. This feature can be accessed through your hearing aid app and is available in Starkey and Signia hearing aids.
In Starkey hearing aids, this feature is called “Edge Mode,” and in Signia, this feature is accessed through a symbol of a person wearing a face mask in the right-hand corner of the app home screen (it should turn red when activated). It is important to remember that once you activate these, you need to deactivate them when you leave the environment.
ReSound hearing aids also have an additional Mask program, but this is specific to their ONE hearing aids and must be added by the programming audiologist. When you enable “Face Mask Mode,” the goal is to improve speech clarity that is lost when visual cues are not available and boost the volume to combat any attenuation caused by masks.
Essentially, it acts as a microphone for the talkers around you, boosting their voices and making them easier to access. For example, if you are in a work meeting with four other people who are wearing masks, you may have a difficult time understanding exactly what they are saying, even in a quiet setting. This work meeting is very important, and you do not want to misinterpret anything that is said.
Throughout the meeting, one person is very difficult to hear, and you are missing 50% of what they are saying, even with your hearing aids on. Instead of constantly having to ask for clarity or repetition, you can enable “Face Mask Mode.” Now the person across the table from you can talk, and you will hear their voice at a louder level and with more emphasis on speech frequencies. This clears up any confusion and allows you to be an active member in the meeting.
If this feature does not seem like enough help, talk to your audiologist to see if other adjustments can be made within your hearing aid programming to help.
Communication Strategies When Masks Are Worn
When communicating with others with masks, there are simple communication strategies you can use to improve your overall experiences and understanding. Make sure to use a clear, strong voice. This does not mean raising your voice until you are yelling, but to talk loud enough that your voice will travel over the distance between you and the others.
You should also enunciate each word. This allows each individual speech sound to be heard through your mask. When talking with others who are wearing masks, try to be in a quieter environment. If you are in a loud open space, move to the corner or away from other large groups.
If you are attending a presentation, ask the speaker to provide closed captioning or use a microphone. The hardest part of using these communication strategies is advocating for yourself and asking those around you to use them as well. Gently remind those around you that communication with masks is difficult by itself, but adding hearing loss on top of it can be impossible.
Preventing Hearing Aid Loss While Wearing Masks
Aside from masks affecting overall speech clarity and volume, they can also impact how we wear hearing aids in general. Our first suggestion is for how we place the hearing aids on our ears. With behind-the-ear style hearing aids, the body of the hearing aid should always sit closest to your ear, not your head. If you wear glasses, these should be placed between the hearing aids and your head.
When putting a mask on, the mask should be the item closest to your head. This limits any interaction between the mask strings and your hearing aid body. This is important because the most common complaint following masks was that ears felt cramped due to overcrowding with glasses, hearing aids, and masks, and people were worried about losing their devices.
Behind-the-ear style hearing aids are the most common and diverse style of hearing aids, but they often get caught in mask strings and fly when they are removed. If after proper placement, your hearing aids are still getting caught in masks, there are other options to explore to help with retention.
First, we always recommend hearing aid users remove their masks within their car or at home, not within a public space. This reduces the chance of the hearing aid being completely lost, even if it were to come off your ear. After removing your mask, check both ears to see if your hearing aids are still in place. If not, they should be within the front seat of your car or right by where you are standing in your house.
You can also use the “Find My Hearing Aid” feature within your hearing aid app to help locate the device.
Another option to help reduce the number of items in your ears is to pursue a custom-made hearing aid. These devices are made by taking earmold impressions of your ear canal and sit entirely within the concha bowl of your outer ear or the ear canal. This removes the chance of masks sending the hearing aids flying off your ears when removing them.
Additional retention options include using an Ear Saver, neck gaiter, or shirt clip. An Ear Saver is a plastic piece where you attach your face mask strings, and it sticks at the base of your neck. A neck gaiter, if allowed in your area, encircles your neck, mouth, and nose and helps hold hearing aids steady during removal. A shirt clip connects a lanyard between your hearing aids and shirt, ensuring the device does not leave your body.
Reclaim Confident Communication With Hearing Aids and Masks
We recognize and understand how hard masks have been and the impact they have had on everyone’s hearing health. Our goal is always to provide you with solutions that best fit your lifestyle and needs, but sometimes those solutions need to be adapted to fit the world around us.
If you are someone who has been struggling the past few years with wearing hearing aids, keeping them successfully on your ears, and feeling defeated whenever anyone is wearing a mask, contact your audiologist and discuss these concerns. Although we have talked about a few options for improving listening conditions with masks, there are many other programming changes that can be made to help improve the clarity of speech.
Listening and communicating are important, especially in a post-pandemic world. Let us help you live the life you love to hear, even while navigating hearing aids and masks.
Ask an audiologist today!
