Masked: Communication Fail for Those of Us Who Read Lips

Now that everyone in the world is wearing a face covering, I have become completely Deaf. Well, not everyone in the world. The selfish and ignorant people don’t bother with protection. But I don’t let those people come close enough to me to understand what they would say anyway because I have not the least desire to hear it. Already 80% Deaf, I depend on reading lips to help me make sense of what people say. When I can’t see a person’s lips, I find it extremely difficult to understand. I don’t have an 80% loss when I wear my hearing aids, but I still struggle. Hearing aids help but they also distort. For someone like me, with a severe hearing loss (including 100% loss in the upper range), hearing aids can only do so much. They don’t restore ordinary hearing and they certainly don’t bring my hearing back to 100%. In recent years, I have discovered how important it is for me to read lips to supplement the sounds that reach my brain. I hear a lot better when I can see a person’s face. It’s not just the lips. It’s also the expression. This is a fundamental element of Deaf culture that hearing people don’t readily understand.

American Sign Language (ASL) is about more than just making signs with the hands. It’s also about facial expression and body movement. It’s a beautifully demonstrative language through which Deaf and signing people say a great deal with their hands, faces, and bodies. Therefore, communicating in ASL while wearing a face mask is not as simple as it may seem. Seeing facial expressions gives communication essential nuance and context. For instance, the sign for “I understand” is the same as for “I don’t understand” and the way to tell the difference is the facial expression that goes along with it. Even when fluent signers wear face masks, they may find it challenging to correctly understand one another. And signed conversation loses a great deal of depth and meaning once half the face is no longer visible.

While I am not fluent in ASL, I can understand quite a bit of signing if the signer goes slowly and helps me out when I get lost. I’m an intermediate signer. I can make myself understood better than I can understand. I find this an interesting twist on learning a language. I have tried to learn French and Spanish, and at one time in my life I could converse adequately in both; but no longer, since I have not used these languages in years. I remember that when I was learning these languages I could understand others speaking them better than I could speak them myself. ASL is the opposite. I can make myself understood fairly well. And if I come up blank I can fingerspell a word and be shown the sign. On the other hand, when I watch others signing (particularly fluent signers), I don’t recognize all the signs and it goes by too quickly for me to understand. Most of my Deaf and fluently signing friends are wonderfully patient with me and I appreciate it.   

My point here is that not only do those of us with limited hearing who read lips find it challenging to understand people in face masks, but also Deaf people completely fluent in ASL find it challenging. We depend a great deal on visual cues to read the world.

My husband is very patient and very good about helping me understand, but he’s only human and does fall short. For instance, he sometimes sits down on the edge of the bed on his side and, as he prepares to retire for the night, taking off his slippers and such, he talks to me. I, of course, understand nothing since he is facing away from me. I remind him by saying, “You’re talking to a wall.” (Meaning the wall of the bedroom.) And he replies, “I sure am.” When I can’t see his face then I can’t understand him. But if he were to wear a face mask with a window in it then he could help interpret for me in the new crazy world in which we live. He interprets for me out in the world all the time with tremendous generosity. So I bought him a face mask with a window. It’s very cool.

Unfortunately for people like me, wearing face masks is here to stay for some time to come. So when I discovered that face masks with windows in them had become available, I searched suppliers, and I bought face masks with windows in them on Etsy for $7 each. I have seen them on sale for much more money elsewhere – someone is always out to make a buck on a good idea and consumer need. That’s capitalism. I go out once a week to buy food, so I don’t have much occasion to show off my windowed face mask. But I wore it to the store and the cashiers expressed interest in it and one of them even said she was going to buy one. I wear it in case I run into someone I know who is hard of hearing like me and also so that people will notice and hopefully ask me about it so I can educate them. All healthcare professionals should wear masks with windows. That would be the thoughtful and practical thing to do. In fact, I believe that even hearing people rely on lip reading and facial expression far more than they realize.

I have not seen anyone else in my community wearing a face mask with a window. When I am out and about I have two options. The first is to simply not understand. This happens more often than not. The other option is to tell people I can’t understand and then remove myself to at least five feet from them if they are willing to pull their mask down and repeat what they said. (While I still wear my mask.) I have no quarrel with them if they don’t feel comfortable unmasking. That is a completely valid choice. But I still can’t understand them if their mouth is covered.

Lately a new habit has crept into my behavior. When I am out and conversing with others in face masks, I catch myself signing while talking, even though the people to whom I am talking don’t know ASL. It’s the way my mind seems to process this situation. Do I subconsciously (and falsely) assume that if I sign while I speak then they will do the same back? My closest Deaf friend says that I am starting to feel ASL in my body when I communicate. I hope he’s right because that would be cool; like the ASL equivalent of dreaming in a foreign language as proficiency progresses. I used to be a fairly unintuitive person. But since going Deaf, I read body language and facial cues so much more that I seem to have strengthened my intuition muscle and I notice a great deal of unspoken communication.

Transitioning from a hearing person to a Deaf person this far into my life offers me a fascinating journey into a new land. These days, living in a world of masked people, that journey has taken some truly unanticipated turns. As ever, life happens. I guess until it doesn’t. I’m grateful it’s still happening to me so far, whether I can hear it or not.