Sensory Friendly Solutions
Welcome to the Sensory Friendly Solutions Podcast!
Dive into our ever-growing series of 27 episodes that explore the fascinating world of your senses, tackling sensory sensitivity, sensory overload, and practical sensory-friendly solutions for daily life. Each episode is a blend of expert insights, personal stories, and actionable advice, designed to inspire and empower.
What sets us apart? Our episodes feature international luminaries like occupational therapist and researcher Dr. Winnie Dunn, best-selling author Carol Stock Kranowitz, and the world-renowned autism advocate Dr. Temple Grandin. We also amplify the voices of parents, individuals with lived sensory experiences, and innovators who’ve created sensory-friendly solutions that truly work.
But there’s more—our audio conference content takes a deep dive into specialized topics, including Sensory Friendly Dentistry and Sensory Friendly Travel, offering fresh perspectives on areas that impact everyday life.
At the helm of the podcast is Christel Seeberger, Founder and CEO of Sensory Friendly Solutions. With a 30-year career as an occupational therapist and her own lived experience of sensory sensitivity and overload due to adult-onset hearing loss, Christel brings unique insights and a passionate drive to make the world more sensory-friendly for all.
Join us for enlightening discussions, transformative ideas, and real-world solutions. Let’s work together to make life more sensory-friendly—because small changes create big differences!
Sensory Friendly Solutions
Changes in hearing for adults 55+ with Lynn Leblanc
In this episode of the 55+ Travelers: Arriving & Thriving Audio Conference join Sensory Friendly Solutions Founder Christel Seeberger, and guest hosts Sophie Yang and Christopher Basmadjian, occupational therapy students, as they take a deep dive into the extensive expertise of Lynn Leblanc, Executive Director, New Brunswick Deaf and Hard of Hearing Services Inc.
Lynn teaches listeners about the challenges of hearing loss along with the simple solutions that make communication easier for mature travelers.
Episode Guide
0:21 Special Guest Lynn Leblanc
0:49 How Lynn got involved with the Deaf Community
2:28 Lynn's role as the Executive Director of the NB Deaf & Hard of Hearing Services Inc.
5:16 Programs & Services Offered by the NBDHHS
8:01 Lynn's Experience Working at the NBDHHS
11:02 Avoiding Isolation for Deaf Individuals
13:16 Traveling with hearing loss: A Client Example
16:01 How owners & operators can make their guests more comfortable
18:05 The Baby Boomer Population
18:45 Creating a great customer experience
20:01 Airports and Hearing Accessibility
23:35 Significant challenges for hard of hearing travelers
28:38 Hearing aids don't always solve the problem
30:06 What's important for restaurants and businesses to know about hearing aids?
32:32 You are going to be including a whole lot more people by nature, by trying to include this one group.
36:30 COVID-19 and the impact on the hard of hearing
39:40 What are non-manual cues and why are they important
45:28 The difference between someone who is hard of hearing and someone who is completely deaf
50:50 Lynn's tips for tourism and restaurant operators.
56:15 Thank you, Lynn Leblanc!
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Christopher Basmadjian: [00:00:01] Welcome to the 55 plus Travelers: Arriving and Thriving audio-conference, brought to you by Sensory Friendly Solutions. I’m your host Christopher Basmadjian. In this episode you will also hear the voices of co-hosts Sophie Yang, my fellow occupational therapy student, as well as Sensory Friendly Solutions founder and CEO Christel Seeberger.
In this episode we welcome Lynn Lebanc, Executive Director of the New Brunswick Deaf and Hard of Hearing Services Inc. Lynn has 3 decades of experience serving the Deaf and hard of hearing community. Many adults, especially older adults, experience hearing loss, and hearing aids just do not solve the problem. Lynn has an incredible number of helpful tips and strategies to share with us to help us solve this problem. Lynn, would you introduce yourself?
Lynn Leblanc: [00:00:43] Well. I started in this business back in 1993, I initially got involved with the deaf community in Moncton, New Brunswick, and served on their board and a position as an employment counselor became available in St. John. And I moved to St. John in 1993 to work as an employment counselor. And after a couple of years they were looking for an executive director because the person that had had that position before moved. So I moved into that position in 1995 and I guess I stayed there until the present day. My interest in this field came from when I was a manager in a sporting goods store in Moncton, and I had clients who were deaf and hard of hearing that came in and required different services. And so I went off and learned sign language and also learned how to communicate more effectively with the hard of hearing individuals to... to give them a certain level of service in our store. This increased our customer base, of course, because they were getting services that they couldn't get anywhere else. And from there I just transitioned into this field, because it was a field of interest to me, the languages are coming from Moncton.
Christopher Basmadjian: [00:02:20] So as executive director of the New Brunswick Deaf and Hard of Hearing Services, could you briefly explain what is your role there?
Lynn Leblanc: [00:02:30] Oh, my! My role....
Christopher Basmadjian: [00:02:35] Sounds like a large basket!
Lynn Leblanc: [00:02:37] Well, it is. My role here is from A to Z. When I first came to St. John Deaf and Hard of Hearing, it was at the time, and I sat on the board of Southeast Deaf and Hard of Hearing. There was two organizations who served the province. We had a operational budget of about 80 000 dollars a year and that was for two employees, plus a contracted employee that was paid for by the federal government who happened to be me at the time. And then when we moved into... when I moved into the executive director role, I changed the focus of the organization to be... operate more like a business as opposed to a social services delivery. We still provided social services to clients free of charge, but we no longer provided services to the community, and government, and employers free of charge. So that allowed us to have more financial stability. And with that financial stability came more programs, more services. So now we're operating out of three different cities. We serve the whole province. We’ve become New Brunswick Deaf and Hard of Hearing Services. So I'm responsible for all employees, programs, services, contracts with government, finances. Now that the organization has grown, we have an operations director. So I am able to offload a lot of responsibilities on the operational director so that I have more time to spend on government... development of programs and services and finances to cover those programs and services and the development of new services. So we started it as a very, very small organization at 80 000 dollars and we are now a million dollar service delivery organization. So we have grown a lot now. We've gone from two... two employees to ten and we're just about to onboard a new one and we just got a contract. So we should be onboarding two or three new individuals by fall.
Christopher Basmadjian: [00:05:00] Wow! That’s really good to hear that the really... growth over time is just, wow, amazing. So you're mentioning programs and services earlier. Could you tell us a few and what they entail?
Lynn Leblanc: [00:05:16] Well, we have programs and services and I always say we do A to Z. We... we fill in the gaps. Sometimes there are programs and services that people want that don't exist. And so we just kind of invent them. Some of the programs that we have, our language development programs for, for young deaf children, we have family support services for families who have deaf and hard of hearing children. We have interpreting services, we have literacy and life support programs, we have transition services starts at grade 10, we transition students who are deaf and hard of hearing either to post-secondary or to... to employment or community, depending on where they are. We do employer in-services. We go to different employers and talk to them about the hard of hearing issues and how to accommodate and incorporate a person who is hard of hearing in their workforce. How to be more inclusive. We also do that for, for the deaf community. We go to senior groups and talk to seniors about these types of things. We work with families who have an individual who has just become late deafened and the family doesn't know how to communicate. The family gets very frustrated because they want to continue their communication style the way they're used to.
Christopher Basmadjian: [00:06:51] Yeah.
Lynn Leblanc: [00:06:52] But obviously the person with the hearing loss is no longer able to keep up to that. So we have to go in and, and in-service everyone on... on how they need to change how they communicate, because we can't we can't teach the person to get the hearing back or to, to listen in a different way. It's them who have to change the way in which they communicate. We do that type of service with any health care provider, any service provider, families, things like this. We also do technology assessments. We go in for schools and employment and some seniors, if they want us to go into their homes, and we do an assessment on what types of technology would be beneficial for them for their daily living, something that will improve their access to communication. These types of things. Uh, there's probably so much that's a lot of that's all I can think of right at the moment.
Christopher Basmadjian: [00:07:53] Sounds like a whole lot of stuff, right? It's like a lot of programs. A lot of people. In your experience, working at the New Brunswick Deaf and Hard of Hearing Services, what has been your experience working there and working with the people and working with your clients? And how does... how is that... has that ever evolved or is it always... is it a constant learning process? Because everyone has different experiences.
Lynn Leblanc: [00:08:16] Well it's... it's always evolving and it's always different because each client comes in, has a different hearing loss. Hearing loss is not specific to a person, and it depends on an individual's life experience and their experiential learning. Someone who's had a lot of experiential learning prior to their hearing loss will adapt in a different way than a person who has... hasn't had any. And it also depends on the onset of the hearing loss. You know. Was it during 0 to 5? Was it during the developmental time frame? Did it come later in life? Is it significant enough that a person would be considered deaf? And if a person is considered deaf, did they have access to language or is there language deprivation? Language deprivation in both deaf and hard of hearing has a major impact on their academics and their... their educational capacity, which impacts their life at the later end when it comes to employment. So it has been enlightening and a challenge all at the same time, but I have enjoyed each and every individual that we've worked with and seeing them be able to understand their hearing loss and move forward with their hearing loss as opposed to the isolation. We try to avoid isolation as much as we can because that's the major pitfall is that most people with the hearing loss will isolate themselves so that they don't cause frustration to the greater community and family. But the isolation causes much mental health issues and it could potentially even help promote Alzheimer's and dementia and things like this. So, so that's the pitfall that we try to get people to avoid is... is that whole isolation piece, depending on, of course, the age range and their ability to get out and be social. I have to say, covid-19 has not been our friend for the deaf and hard of hearing world. So trying to keep people social through technology is has not been a great experience.
Christopher Basmadjian: [00:10:56] Yeah.
Sophie Yang: [00:10:57] And for these individuals who are... who feel very isolated, what are some things that... that you have done to increase this kind of accessibility to them, to keep connected with others?
Lynn Leblanc: [00:11:11] Well, the first thing we do is work with their community, like the family that they're from, their friends. We try to engage them in incorporating and bringing the person along like they always had before by instructing them on how to be inclusive. Because what happens is, is that, you know, if you're playing cards and there's four of yous and all of a sudden the other person decides that, you know, the struggle is too much and they start staying home while they become isolated. And the group isn't really totally aware of why they're no longer coming. So it's a matter of... of just bringing the disability to the forefront and explaining to the friend or their social group how to be inclusive. And that usually works. There's a lot... it depends on how long they've been isolating themselves. And that isolation is sometimes, if mental health issues have set in, hard to break.
Christel Seeberger: [00:12:20] Lynn, I'm going to interject with... you just made me think of a more important question to ask with that really nice example. So oftentimes, you know, we think of just traveling and that could be even just going out in our own community. Right? Going out to a, you know, it can be a card game that we have with our friends and families or we're going out within our own community to... to yeah, to social settings. Right?
Lynn Leblanc: [00:12:49] Just going to a restaurant.
Christel Seeberger: [00:12:50] Yeah. What are the examples, again, for older adults who... for whom hearing loss might be, might be new? Right? And just the things we do at home going out to a, you know, a show, a restaurant like you said. What is that like and what changes can be made?
Lynn Leblanc: [00:13:13] We had one client that lays it out
Christel Seeberger: [00:13:16] On what changes
Lynn Leblanc: [00:13:17] Well we had one client that liked to travel a lot, but was not wanting to travel because they couldn't hear the conversations that were going on in the car. So she was no longer enjoying those outings. So we were able to... to get her a piece of assistive technology that she would borrow when they were going on a car trip and the microphone would fit into the front of the car so she could hear all of the conversations. So she felt far more inclusive that way and enjoyed going out on the day trips and the weekend trips that they used to go on. Restaurants, you have to be, you have to be able to openly communicate your needs to... to your friends and social group that's going out because you want to pick a restaurant that's not an open restaurant, because if you go into an open restaurant, it's very noisy. The din of everybody talking and everybody eating is quite loud. You want to pick a restaurant where there is... a booth is a perfect place. So, you know, you have the two tall sides on both sides and generally a wall there. So the sound is only coming in usually from one direction. Or if you're in a restaurant that is a little more open, that you haven't had a choice, then you want to seat yourself behind a wall rather than in an open air so that the sound doesn't just travel by you. And again, your... your participants would have to be in-serviced and you want to keep your grouping small. You don't want a table of 12 because you're never going to hear the person at the end of the table. Then again, neither is the person with the hearing. If you're hearing, you're not going to hear a person at the table with 12 people.
Christopher Basmadjian: [00:15:04] That’s very true.
Lynn Leblanc: [00:15:06] But... but the... the thing is, is that people with a significant hearing loss have a tendency to believe, and they forget what it's like to hear, they have a tendency to believe that we can hear everything when, when actually we all don't hear everything. But... but my suggestion for those types of groups is, for social events, is to keep them small so that the person with a hearing loss is not at a greater distance. And because the further distance, the less that they're going to hear.
Christel Seeberger: [00:15:38] Just gave some really wonderful examples in that Lynn of, just from the point of view, of just the restaurant owner or operator. Right? And... and just, you know, that example of different types of seating. Right? Making different types of seating available to patrons of a restaurant. Do you have any other suggestions for those owner operators and types of things that they can do to... to change, to make travel and tourism for their guests more comfortable?
Lynn Leblanc: [00:16:10] Yeah, well, first of all, they need to have lighting. That's... that's one thing that happens often.They need to make their lighting independent so that if they have some consumers that come in that are deaf and hard of hearing, that they're able to keep the light on their table and dim the lights everywhere else so that they can see each other. Keep... keep... On the tables they don't, they don't need visual noise because that tends to get in the way of being able to see another person's non-manual cues so that you're able to speech read and things like this. But most especially, they need something that... that has acoustically based, you know, something like, not all restaurants have booths, but if you happen to have a booth, when you're reserving your... your place, they should mention that they have a significant hearing loss and that a booth would be the most appropriate place and they could reserve that. The other thing they would need is, is to ensure that the walls that they have, where they have seating on the other side of the walls, is that it's padded. If they have some... some... some nice quilted type padding, you know, that's very, very designer friendly, that would be helpful as well. Because what happens is, is they all put a ramp in and think that it's totally accessible, but... but it's totally accessible for people with mobility issues, perhaps, but it's not necessarily accessible for, for a person with a hearing loss. The other thing is, is that 10 percent of the population has a significant hearing loss. So we're looking at a significant amount of population to try and encourage as clients. And as the baby boomers, me being one of them, get older, the hearing loss goes down, and the biggest demographic out there right now that you want as a client or patron is a baby boomer because they're in that age group. They, they all seem to have dispensable cash at hand. And they're the ones that you want as repeat customers.
Christopher Basmadjian: [00:18:33] Yeah. You don't want them having to say, oh, I don't want to go there because I'm going to have trouble with X, Y and Z. Right? You want to accommodate them as much as you can?
Lynn Leblanc: [00:18:44] Absolutely.
Christopher Basmadjian: [00:18:45] It just provides a good customer experience too. Right? It's not all about the money. It's also like about providing good experiences for the clients, to say, hey, they really enjoyed their time and they might want to come back later. Right?
Lynn Leblanc: [00:18:56] They might want to come back and they will tell others.
Christopher Basmadjian: [00:18:59] Yeah, definitely!
Lynn Leblanc: [00:19:00] And it also... it also, it's not just an accommodation for people who are deaf and hard of hearing. They will find that that comfort level of, of ease of listening is something that other patrons want as well. So by accommodating the deaf and hard of hearing, they are making their... their business more comfortable for hearing and... and for ease of communication, so any age level can appreciate that.
Sophie Yang: [00:19:44] So thinking about environments that may be pretty loud, like, for instance, airports or train stations. Can you think of some ways to increase the accessibility for people with hearing loss?
Lynn Leblanc: [00:19:58] Well. I guess when you say airports, that must be because you come from a bigger city, because airports around here are pretty quiet because they are rather small, but they need... because when the announcements come out there, they're always garbled. So a person with a hearing loss is never going to catch that. And they could potentially miss their flight or miss a change of gates or anything like that. So in, in an airport, they should all be done visually so that they're able to, you know, they're going to do it auditorily always. But they should also have access to a visual notification. And federally now, I have not checked what type of accommodations federal regulated airports and train stations have done, but if a person with a significant hearing loss checks in, there should be a way for those types of notifications to be sent directly to their smartphones. We live in the world of technology right now, so that... that should be something that is easily done. I mean, they now have smartphones that link directly to your hearing aids so that if you're in a small environment, you can use your cell phone as the microphone similar to one FM system, which cancels out the background noise so that you just hear the voices. So there... the technology is advancing day by day for people with a hearing loss and places like airports and train stations and bus stations should be able to use that technology.
Christopher Basmadjian: [00:21:52] Yeah, because if you think about it, we hear the P.A., we hear the person saying “last boarding call”, but we never see anywhere that says last boarding call. Right? You just see that huge board full of dates, times and destinations, but those announcements that we hear, we never really see them. Right?
Lynn Leblanc: [00:22:09] Right.
Christopher Basmadjian: [00:22:10] So must make it hard for some people to say, hey what did the person say? Did they call my name?. Do they need my luggage checked? Is it my flight that's being called? There's all those doubts that creep in sometimes, especially in the airport where it's super busy. There's a lot of people around and especially in the bigger city, right?
Lynn Leblanc: [00:22:26] Yep, yep. And it shouldn't be that difficult for them to set up something that would... would go directly to one smartphone. You would have to register for that, but I'm, I'm assuming part of hearing travelers would have no issue registering for those types of notifications to come straight to their smartphone so that they're aware of last minute changes. Because the systems are probably the worst possible medium for the dispersement of... of notifications when, when you have hearing loss. Mm hmm.
Christopher Basmadjian: [00:23:08] Um, shifting gears a bit, I want to talk about, let's say traveling and site visits and museum tours and concerts and all that kind of entertainment, let's say that someone would want to go to if they're visiting another town or to just sort of moving around your own town. Right? Are there any common difficulties that you hear from clients about going to such events? I remember like before you mentioned the restaurants and stuff, but are there any more significant ones in those types of settings?
Lynn Leblanc: [00:23:37] Yes, of course. Depending on... depending on the, the level of the hearing loss, people who are deaf rarely get access to any of that stuff. There are no laws in Canada as of yet to... to enforce that type of accessibility. It's not like if you travel to the States and you go to any of those events, you ask for the accommodation, you will get it. For a person with a significant hearing loss, depending on the museum, some of them have the... the headsets that, you know, when you get to a GPS location, it starts telling you what... what the display is and what the information is. So, so you can link... they can link that to their hearing aids through Bluetooth, and that's providing the person with the hearing loss that hearing aids are still functioning well enough for them, for them to be able to get the information in that fashion. There are, like I said, there are smartphones now that work connected with your hearing aids that will act as a FM/DM type system so that if it's a guided tour, then the person would be holding holding the phone or holding the mic or having the mic clipped on their... their shirt so that you can hear all of that explanation. In Canada, you don't get a lot of accommodations as you go along because the Accessibility Act is new and it's more for government services right at the present time. It doesn't really cover private organizations and private businesses. Hopefully at some point it will expand into that similar to the ADA laws in the US where you can go to Disney World and get all kinds of accommodations, you can go to the theater in the United States and get all kinds of accommodations. So we're still quite a bit behind here in Canada for that. Concerts, on the other hand, I would recommend that you put hearing plugs in before you go in. You will still hear the music through the hearing plugs and you will not cause further damage to... to your hearing. If it's a music concert there, there shouldn't be a need for accommodation because it's pretty loud to start with.
Christopher Basmadjian: [00:26:33] Yeah, definitely. Those speakers are pretty loud in those big stadiums. Even in the smaller venues, they sound sometimes as if they're being blasted straight into our ears.
Lynn Leblanc: [00:26:44] Yes. And if you were a baby boomer, that's why the most of us are headed to the audiologists as we speak to get hearing aids to cover the damage that we did back in our younger years. So I recommend that people wear hearing... hearing plugs every time they go to a concert. It will not, it will not filter out the sound of the concert. It will just protect your ears from damage.
Christel Seeberger: [00:27:11] I'd like to follow on with Christopher, you made me think of a little question or just something to explore with Lynn and just that I'll call it that little bit of a sensory overload or that sensory sensitivity. And just so, for example, you know, Lynn, you talked about the... the hearing aids and the amplification of the sound and the technology, some of the significant advancements in technology. I'll say with some hearing aids, they tend to be. Right? Much more expensive and maybe not accessible to, to, to everyone. Right? The technology is there not always not always accessible. So for, for hearing aid users, um, so sound is amplified. Right? And sometimes it's not always the sound you want to hear that's amplified. Right? It's not always the conversation. It's everything else. What, you know, what would you say again, and it's just talking a little bit about like customer experience and so people going out and enjoying places. So they, you know, just sort of ties into that. What's important for, you know, restaurant owners, you talked about museums, you talked about just any of those public facing venues, what's important for them to know? There's a little bit of an assumption that... that hearing aids solve the problem. Right? And that, that, you know, the sensory overload will, you know, they're getting a little bit more of everything with the hearing aids. What, what would you say to that?
Lynn Leblanc: [00:28:53] Well, I mean, that that's a whole workshop in itself. But, but suffice it to say that you're right. The general public believes that hearing aids, putting in a pair of hearing aids is like putting on a pair of glasses, which is not the case. You put on a pair of glasses and it rectifies your vision loss to 2020. However, hearing aids don't... don't return any loss. There is no... once you have a hearing loss, it's, it's gone. There's no bringing it back. And the hearing aids don't allow you to hear what's already lost. It allows you to hear what's left around your loss so that you can use closure skills to be able to discern and decode along with non-manual cues, because a person with a significant hearing loss, what happens is they hear a third, they gleam a third through non-manual cues and then they, they have the closure skills for the final third. So, so for those businesses, it would be good for them to know that just because a person has a hearing aid doesn't mean that they can hear everything. And, and like Crystal was saying, what a hearing aid does is increase the volume by 30 percent and it's directly input into your auditory nerve. So sometimes it's hard to diffuse out all of that noise and hear the voice because the voices are at the very high end of the spectrum. So it takes a very little hearing loss for the language discrimination part. So if you have a moderate hearing loss, you are already losing a part of language discrimination. So it doesn't take much. So for those businesses, it would be important for them to know that a person who wears hearing aids, you still need to incorporate non-manual cues. You still need to be able to communicate in a... in an efficient manner. You have to look at them. Sound only travels in one direction. If you turn your head, that sound is gone. If you look down, the sound is gone. You need to have eye contact and speak directly to the person so that they can hear you. And that's at all junctures. That means the hostess who's sitting you down, the waitress who's coming later, all of those things. Now, if they look people in the eye and speak directly to them, that's a matter of respect for everybody, that would improve their customer service, not only for a person with... with a hearing loss, but people in general. So a lot of the... the... the key points for... for communication for a person with a hearing loss is also a key portion for people in general and people in general will appreciate that, those kind of details.
Christel Seeberger: [00:32:01] Lynn, that's... you've made that point a couple of times, and I think that's an incredibly important take home message, what helps people who are deaf and hard of hearing, what helps older adults with hearing loss actually helps many more people to.
Lynn Leblanc: [00:32:21] It's much like when they started putting in ramps for... for people in wheelchairs with mobility issues, while it also helps seniors. It also helped parents with strollers. It also... There's, there's a whole significant, you know, people out there that... that one accommodation was meant for one disability group, but it helped a whole lot of people. So it's just the whole process of universal design inclusion. Yes. You're including people who have normally been excluded, but you are going to be including a whole lot more people by nature, by trying to include this one group.
Sophie Yang: [00:33:06] Going back to your thoughts of like wearing hearing aids kind of amplifies the noise. I was thinking, what are your thoughts on background noise, like in restaurants you often like put in background music. How does that affect people with hearing loss?
Lynn Leblanc: [00:33:24] Well, it's just extra noise. As a person who's hearing and who's a baby boomer and starting to experience hearing loss for themselves, I personally don't like background music because music tends to get turned up and up and up and up. And generally you have a hard time communicating with the person who's actually sitting across from you. So background noise is the biggest nevus for a person with a significant hearing loss, because then you're competing with the noise around you, with the person who... who you're trying to communicate with. And that's in all settings. Work, I mean, I have a photocopier and printer right behind me, and when it goes off, I can't hear anybody else. So, so background noise affects us all and we don't realize it until it turns off. And then you go, ohhhh. As soon as the room is quiet, you have this calming. And what that... what that is, is that your brain is going “oh my God” because you're... you're just constantly trying to tune out background noise. And for those of us who have our... all of our hearing, like the brain is able to, you know, screen out that background noise. But for those of us who have hearing aids, that background noise comes directly into the input nerves. And it's not as easy to... to just tune that out. I remember when my dad first got his hearing aids, I put his hearing aids on and he's like: “What's that noise?” And I'm listening, I'm going: “What? That noise? Can't you hear that noise? That noise? Oh, dad, that's the fridge!” He had... he just for the longest time, couldn't hear the fridge anymore. He goes: “well, that's... that's annoying.” I said: “well, welcome to the hearing world.” That's the fridge. Then the fireplace went on and he was like: “oh, what's that noise?” I said: “that it's just the fireplace.” He's like: “oh.” So he had to get used to all of those environmental noises again to know what they were so that he didn't feel anxious that, OK, is there something wrong? So... so there's a learning curve for when people get hearing aids and start hearing the world around them again. But when you're out in the real world, there's a whole heck of a lot more noise and background noises that you're not able to filter out, you know, when you're on the street and the cars are going and people are honking their horns and things like this, that's... that's a lot of noise that is hard to filter out.
Christopher Basmadjian: [00:36:17] And I would imagine it's harder now more than ever to communicate with each other if you have hearing problems, especially with covid and people wearing masks and being behind face shields and all these kinds of barriers. So not only do you have a barrier in front of your mouth, but also if you have deaf and hard of hearing, you rely sometimes on that visual mouth... mouth reading? Is that the term? Mouth reading?
Lynn Leblanc: [00:36:41] Visual cues, non-manual cues, and speech reading
Christopher Basmadjian: [00:36:46] Yeah. The visual cues. Yeah. Yeah. And you rely on those like sometimes because maybe they didn’t hear it right or, you know, you have to fill in that gap as you mentioned earlier. But with these masks on, it just makes it... I want to say, a world of a lot harder.
Lynn Leblanc: [00:36:58] Well, covid-19 has not been friendly to the deaf and hard of hearing community. Communication has… has not been easy because of masks and all of these things. In New Brunswick, though, they have a stipulation that if the person is deaf or hard of hearing, you are able to remove your mask, providing your socially distancend to deliver the information that you need to deliver, and then you mask up again. Now, not everybody's comfortable with that, and that means the person who’s hard of hearing has to continually advocate for themself to say: “I need you... I'm hard of hearing, I need you to remove your mask.” And if they're deaf, the same thing, unless they're with an interpreter, then they don't have to worry about it. But, you know, the mask has muffled speech, I mean, it's difficult to understand what people are saying with the mask on. So... so that has made things increasingly difficult for... for people with hearing loss. And of course, when you're mass, you only see their eyes. So, you know, non-manual cues and speech reading is just not there. So being able to... to connect the dots and close that gap has been a big challenge for seniors and for people who are hard of hearing. And the whole isolation piece. Right? So they're all home and... but we're going green soon. So the world hopefully will return to our new normal in a couple of months and hopefully people will be able to get out, become social again and bring that back to our lives because we are social beings. And without it... it... it has major impact on our mental health.
Christel Seeberger: [00:38:59] Lynn, you... you mentioned a couple of times just the... those visual cues, those non-manual cues, and I just, I... and you gave us a couple of examples earlier on. I'm wondering if you could just talk about the importance of that. Just that, again, respectful communication, just letting people know, working with older adults, you know, you may or may not see that they wear a hearing aid, that hearing aid definitely doesn't solve all the problems. What are some of those just very practical tips? They really amaze me at how important and not understood or adopted they are.
Lynn Leblanc: [00:39:40] Well, non-manual cues are generally facial expressions, body movements, body language, those kinds of things. And... and when you're working with seniors and people with a hearing loss, it's very important to be expressionate. So, you know, smile, make sure that, you know, they feel welcomed. The other important thing is, is to if... if the communication is... is serious in nature, then you have to have a serious face on. And sadly, if you're angry, then you can't be smiling and be angry because you know that the non-manual cues don't match the information. And people with a hearing loss will always side on the body language and the non-manual cues than they will to the actual words you're saying. So if you're saying: “no, I'm not happy”, and you're smiling, then they're going to go, OK, that... that can't be true because they're smiling and things look good. And the body language also will tell all. In the deaf community it's also movement like leaning forward, leaning back, that they all have different meanings, even though you're saying the same thing. The most important thing is for them to speak clearly. What happens is, is when a person is hard of hearing, all of a sudden they seem to think that they have to show them their tonsils. They go: “Helllloooo. How are yoooouuuuu?” Well, that distorts your... your speech. So they don't necessarily understand what you're saying. They also tend to think that I have to shout at them. So as soon as they raise their voices, it, it... your throat constricts here and it makes... it gives you the same appearance of frustration and anger, even though that is not your intent or your... your…. your…. the case. But to the person with a significant hearing loss, when they're looking at you, that's what it looks like. So... so it's important to enunciate, speak clearly. And if the person doesn't understand what you're saying, don't repeat it. Just rephrase it to a different... a different way of saying the same thing, because not all words can be read on the lips. Two thirds of what we say is formed inside the mouth. So only a third of what we say can be read on the lips. The rest is all non-manual cues and closure skills, providing the person knows the topic. So it's always important to have the person's attention first, identify the topic and then you can communicate. And it makes it much easier for the person with a significant hearing loss and then they'll be able to follow. They can see the non-manual cues and they'll be able to tell at what level of intensity this communication interaction will be.
Christel Seeberger: [00:42:49] This is so fascinating. I love these just very practical tips. Tell us a little bit more about those closure skills. Talk a little bit about that. But I'd... I'd like to hear more about that because I I think I use them an awful lot. So...
Lynn Leblanc: [00:43:03] So, yeah. Closure skills is... is a euphemism for guessing. So, so what happens is the person with a significant hearing loss providing they know the topic and they're... they're hearing a third, they're reading a third. And then what they'll do depending, and, that's why I said earlier, it depends on the exper... experiential learning of the person, they will be able to go, oh, we're talking about this and this, so this is what they're saying. If you're taught... if you're talking to a person and it's a topic that a person hasn't got any experiential learning, they're likely to use... use whatever closure skills they have, which is your skills, your life experience, your experiential learning. And you put it all together and you come up with B and it will be off topic. So any time you communicate with the person who's hard of hearing and or deaf and they're off topic, it's because the closure skills were off. So you have to be able to bring them back on topic and do what we call an expansion. So you elaborate on... on the topic so that, oh, OK, we're talking about that. And then they're able to... to give input. So those closure skills are very important. And also in the seniors, their closure skill gets smaller, even though they have had a wide life experience. As they get older, they tend to relinquish some of that life experience or they... they... they stay with the life experience they had when they were employed, even though it might have been 20 years ago. And things have changed within that 20 years. So sometimes you have to bring those pieces into the conversation so that the senior goes, oh, right, yeah, the like... the world has changed or we do it like this now without... without trying to make them feel inferior to to the conversation, because they're not aware of the new... the new way or what's going on in the world today.
Christopher Basmadjian: [00:45:11] I would imagine from my point of view, as someone who doesn't have hearing problems, that the difference between someone with hard of hearing and someone who is completely deaf is night and day, is that correct? Their experiences, right?
Lynn Leblanc: [00:45:24] It is. Yes.
Christopher Basmadjian: [00:45:26] And I feel like those two lifestyles are completely different and they're both hard to deal with. Like... Could you tell us a bit more about, let's say, people with... the differences between like the two populations or like the two individuals?
Lynn Leblanc: [00:45:39] Well, people who are deaf, and when we talk about people who are deaf, we're talking about people who are culturally deaf, which means they use a manual language, American Sign Language here in Canada or Langue Signe Québecois. So there's two types of sign language. Oh, I shouldn't say that, there's also Indigenous Sign Language for the indigenous population who live up north. They have their own sign language and there's Maritime Sign Language which is prevalent to Atlantic Canada. That's who we call the deaf community, they're called... they're culturally deaf, and it's identified with an uppercase D on the deaf, if you see a lowercase D, that means someone who is medically deaf. It means when they have their audiogram, they are like profoundly deaf. But not all individuals who have lost hearing to be profound have chosen to go the manual route for education. Sadly, the difference is, is that when someone is born deaf and they... by the time the family chooses sign language as an option, it is later. It comes around usually four or five years old. There's a lot of language deprivation. Language deprivation has a major impact on second language learning. So if you don't have a strong first language, then you won't have a strong second language. Unfortunately, everyone's mainstreamed here in New Brunswick. And what happens is, is the schooling is either in French or English. So it's second language learning for them. So if your first language is low, your second language is going to be lower, which is why, even with mainstreaming, the majority of deaf consumers have a reading... English and or French reading literacy level about grade four to six. Now they're ASL comprehension levels is much, much higher because it's their first language and that's the language by which they're... they learn and work and communicate. They have a whole different cultural system than we do. People who are deaf are collectivists. People who are hearing are individualists. We have a very individualistic society here in North America. Sign language is similar in nature to the Asian type of language, and their culture is very similar, they’re very collectivist. So for the deaf community, what's good for one is good for the whole. They share everything, all information so that everybody can learn through the experiences of others because they know that not everybody is going to have the same lived experience. And the more they can share about their experience with greater world, which they call the hearing community, the better other deaf people can organize themselves and learn. They’re... they have their own language, traditions, norms, values that... that we all have. So any... any language signed or spoken is connected with culture. So you can't have culture without language and you can’t have language without culture. The difference is their... their culture and a lot of their behaviors within their culture is incongruent to ours. So the two communities don't truly understand one another because their... their cultural norms are... are incongruent. It's kind of like a newcomer coming to Canada and having to learn what our norms and values are so that they can assimilate. At the same time, trying to hang on to their cultural identities and their cultural norms, so it's a challenge, it's a big challenge. And the two... the two are so, so different, yet they they face similar challenges and similar discrimination, but at a different level, a capacity.
Christopher Basmadjian: [00:50:25] Just thinking back about earlier when you were talking about someone with hard of hearing going to a restaurant, the eye contact is really important and speaking to you, not to the side or anywhere. How would... what tip would you give workers in the travel and restaurant industries that have deaf clients who are completely deaf? How... what's the most effective way you think that a person who doesn't have this problem, let's say, like us, would communicate with them? What kind of tips would you give?
Lynn Leblanc: [00:50:55] Well, the first thing is a lot of the things are the same. You got to look at them directly in the face because they want to see your non-manual cues. You want to be very welcoming because if you're not smiling, they're not going to feel safe going in there. The best idea is to bring them to their seat because they're going to identify already that they're deaf. So, you know that oral communication is not going to work. You bring them to their seat. I would encourage them to bring them to a seat that's well lit because they can't communicate in the dark and be open to what they're going to do is show you on a menu what they want. So make sure they have a menu. And writing back and forth is the best way to communicate with them. A lot of people like to still talk because even when they identify they're deaf, they... they still talk to them and they still can't hear you. So that's not a very effective mode. Although the general population think all deaf people can speech read much like Sue Thomas in FBI. But nothing could be further from the truth. That’s fiction and TV. But media has a big effect on us, and they tend to believe that all people who are deaf and hard of hearing could speech read, that they can speech read at 100 percent, but obviously, that's not true. So lighted area, looking at them, having them point and... and take their... their... their... their orders in that way, and if you want to communicate with them just right back and forth. A lot of them in today's will take their smartphones and write out what their... their order is and show it to the… But what has to happen is there needs to be respect from the service industry when they look at the language from the deaf person because they're writing in their second language, they're not writing grammatically correct English. And what you need not to do is look at it and do one of these in the sense of “I don't really understand what this is”, that's highly insultive to them. And... and they feel very self-conscious on that. It would be like if you were an Anglophone and you were in the middle of Quebec and you used your grade four French to order your food and the restaurant person laughed at you for... for your French, even though you're trying your best. So... so what we have to remember is English is not their first language. And... and when I say that often people in Toronto would say : “oh, is it French?” No, it's not French either. It's American Sign Language, which is not a written form of language. So when they write, they write in the order that it comes in their language. And... and often it's... it's backwards to... to English grammar. But when you read it conceptually, you should know what they want because you're in a restaurant, they're ordering food, it's not rocket science. You need to use your own closure skills to figure out what it is they're asking for. And to do it without, you know, the eye rolls and the... the... the... the furrowed brows to say, “I don't really understand what this is”, that makes them very uncomfortable and they feel very judged.
Christel Seeberger: [00:54:34] Lynn, you've given us just a phenomenal number of incredibly helpful tips and strategies and just our understanding has, yeah, increased tenfold and exactly what we want for... for our audience. Right? Just in a lovely way, sharing what is helpful.
Lynn Leblanc: [00:54:59] Well, I hope... I hope it helps.
Christel Seeberger: [00:55:03] Helps include more people, right?
Lynn Leblanc: [00:55:05] Well, that's it. That's it. The more we include others, the more we learn as we all have more to learn about others. And cultural diversity is one of the richest gifts we could all get. As we are not alone in this world.
Christel Seeberger: [00:55:27] Thank you, Lynn. I think I think some of that has to be part of our tagline for this audio conference
Christopher Basmadjian: [00:55:33] That last line was really...
Christel Seeberger: [00:55:37] Absolutely brilliant. Like I said, Sophie and Christopher, I know you can't... you can't see my facial... you don't have any of my non-verbal cues throughout this whole thing. And I'm like, yeah, yeah, phenomenal. Lynn, I cannot thank you enough for just, yeah, sharing of your wisdom. Yeah. With Sophie and Christopher and, yeah, our audience.
Lynn Leblanc: [00:56:01] Any time, any time.
Sophie Yang: [00:56:03] I would like to thank Lynn LeBlanc, executive director of the New Brunswick Deaf and Hard of Hearing Services for joining us in this podcast. Her experience in the business is very valuable and we are very glad that she was able to share experiences and tips with everyone. If you learn something new in this episode, you may also appreciate our absolute Shelley Ann Morris and the tips and strategies she shares about helping people with vision loss. You can find more resources about making tourist attractions, events and locations sensory friendly at sensoryfriendly.net.
