Home Safety Tips if a Family Member is Hearing Impaired

One subject which is rarely mentioned when it comes to hearing loss is how to keep people who have it safe inside their own homes. For instance, imagine that a fire breaks out in your house; if you’re like most of us you have smoke alarms to sound an alert so that you and your family can evacuate the premises before the fire becomes widespread, and thus deadly. But now suppose that the fire begins at night, when you are asleep, and you have taken off your hearing aid.

The smoke detectors standard in almost all houses and those required by city or state governments emit a loud warning sound at a frequency between 3,000 and 4,000 Hertz. Although the majority of people can hear these tones easily, these frequencies are among those most affected by age-related hearing loss and other forms of auditory problems. So even if you were awake, if you are one of the more than eleven million Americans with hearing loss, there is a chance that you wouldn’t hear the alarm.

Fortunately, there are home safety products that are specifically created for the requirements of the hearing impaired. For instance, there are smoke detectors that emit a low-frequency (520 Hertz) square wave tone that a majority of hearing-impaired individuals can hear. In case you are completely deaf without your hearing aid or when you turn off your cochlear implants (CIs), you’ll find alarm systems which use a combination of flashing lights, very loud alarms, and vibrating units that shake your bed to wake you up in an emergency. Several of these systems are intended to be incorporated into more complete home security systems to warn you of intruders or people thumping furiously on your doors in the case of an emergency.

Many who have hearing aids or who wear cochlear implants have elected to improve the performance of these devices by installing induction loops in their homes. An induction loop is merely a lengthy strand of wire that encircles your family room, bedroom, or children’s rooms, which activates the telecoils inside your devices to raise the volume of sounds, and thus may help you not to miss any important or emergency signals.

Not to mention the lowly telephone, which all of us tend to ignore until we need one, but which can become critical in any sort of emergency situation. Most modern phones now are available in models that are hearing aid and CI-compatible, which enable their easy use during either normal or extraordinary conditions. Other phone models integrate speakerphone systems with high volumes that can be easily used by the hearing impaired, and more importantly, can be voice-activated. These phones would allow you to voice-dial for assistance in an emergency situation. There are additional accessories for cellphones, such as vibrating wristbands that will alert you to an incoming phone call even if you are sleeping.

Other safety suggestions are less technological and more practical, like always having the telephone numbers of fire departments, ambulance companies, health care providers, and emergency services handy. We are as concerned about your safety as we are about your hearing, so if we can be of service with any further ideas or recommendations, feel free to call us.