In a recent New York Times article, author Katherine Bouton addresses a relevant issue regarding hearing aids and employment. A major concern for many hearing impaired individuals is that their hearing loss will affect their livelihood; unfortunately, this concern become a hearing aid deterrent. This means that many people will deny the need for hearing aids out of fear that the use will be poorly received by employers.
While we have absolutely seen great strides against this kind of discrimination in the workplace, some employees still face this struggle. Bouton’s article points to police departments that (perhaps unintentionally) discourage their employees’ use of hearing aids, with some going so far as to urge early retirement. The misconception that hearing aids imply some kind of handicap is what truly causes this kind of workplace injustice. As we know, hearing aids simply improve one’s ability to function at high-quality every day – in the workplace and out of it. Truthfully, employees with hearing aids are only at a disadvantage when their employers remain ignorant to the modern benefits these aids can bring.
Bouton points out that just five years ago, the N.Y.P.D. “finalized a policy requiring recruits to pass the standard hearing test without hearing aids,” and any officers who could not pass without the use of aids “were off the force.” Evidently, the reasoning behind this was that the department felt that hearing aids could harm job performance, citing concerns such as: “They could miss sounds normal hearing would pick up; they require batteries that could go dead without warning; they have control switches and knobs that . . . will most likely fail during the life of the device, and they .may become . . . rendered inoperative during a physical confrontation.”
But as Bouton cleverly explains, these concerns were based off a near-20-year-old report, and as we’ve come to see ourselves with the incredibly high-functioning hearing aids of our time, “today’s digital hearing aids have few such complications.” In fact, many hearing aids actually allow users to hear better and clearer than most non-users! This means that officers with hearing aids could actually be at an advantage in terms of job performance. But dated misconceptions such as those can threaten to cloud employers’ judgment, as seems to be the case with the N.Y.P.D., who actually forced employees to retire – “each with 20 years on the force.”
Another interesting point that both Bouton and the aforementioned officers make is that officers are allowed to “wear glasses and prosthetic limbs,” both of which could theoretically impede work performance as well. One officer in particular, Daniel Carione, elucidated quite effectively:
“‘Imagine an active shooter protocol. I’m working with my hearing aid. The officer on my left wears prescription glasses. The officer on my right wears a prosthetic leg. The glasses fall off and shatter. The prosthetic leg fractures. My hearing aid battery gives me a 40-minute warning, but let’s say it unexpectedly goes dead. The assailant turns the corner. One officer can’t see. One can’t walk. I can hear out of one ear and more important, I can see. Who would you want standing by?”
Fortunately for these officers and others like them, change has been implemented and discrimination lessened. But the process is still ongoing; eventually, we’d hope to see such ill-informed discrimination eliminated entirely. Bouton points out that in our own city of Boston, these issues are treated on a “case-by-case basis,” that is still not always fair. She cites a 19-year veteran of the B.P.D. forced to retire after failing a hearing test without her aids.
“Most people don’t understand hearing loss, and they don’t understand hearing aids,” Bouton writes. While this is very true, it becomes a larger issue when this ignorance becomes willful. It is important for employers – and actually, most everyday people – to become knowledgeable about both hearing loss and hearing aids. Judgments should not be made without proper understanding, and this should be an employer’s priority when considering the quality of his or her workplace.
Not only that, but enforcing these unfair restrictions actually exacerbates the real hearing aid issue: these types of bans “most likely kept many hearing-impaired police officers, who knew that their jobs were at risk, from getting the help they needed.” And the dangerous outcome? With officers afraid to admit their need for hearing aids, “we have many police officers with uncorrected hearing loss.” Therein lies the “true public safety issue,” as the officers are forced to work at a detriment. And of course, this extends beyond police departments; it is important to fight the hearing aid taboo in all aspects of daily life. Hearing aids should be seen in a positive light, not a negative.
