Why can’t I hear when people are wearing masks?

It has been already a long time that masks are an integral part of our lives and the way we communicate with each other. Sometimes, it is difficult to imagine our usual lives without those. However, wearing masks not only comes with benefits of reduced risk of infection from COVID-19, but it also has several unpleasant effects on our breathing, the way we speak and behaviour in the presence of others.

Talking to someone with a mask and in a distance can raise various confusions and misunderstandings on what exactly you are saying because it is more difficult to articulate speech.

No matter if you have hearing problems or not you can face such problems of misunderstanding while communicating with a person wearing a mask. Let’s review some of the reasons and solutions on similar phenomena.

Talking from a distance

Noticeably, as people wearing hearing aids may know normally the mics of the aid pick up the sound better and more clearly when a person speaking or the sound source is 6’ away from you. In case when the sound source is more than 6’ away, you may as well lose the soft sound and not be able to clearly get the frequencies and understand speech.

Alternative solutions

A great solution to this problem can be to make a purchase of remote microphones if you have to communicate in social distancing. The good news is that all the new hearing aids have this option available and some of the old ones contain it as well.

Wearing a face-mask can muffle one's speech

Simply be aware and ready for the fact that when a person is speaking to you with a mask their speech can be muffled. Let’s be honest, muffled speech is difficult to understand even for people without any hearing problems. The mask muffles the speech as the words get projected to it.

Another reason for a muffled speech of a person talking with a mask on can be the fact that while wearing a mask they are not able to properly and freely open and move their mouth.

Alternative solutions

It’s a really hard situation as it does not depend on your hearing abilities but rather on the person with who you communicate with. In this situation, it is recommended to go direct and to let the person know that you are having difficulty understanding them while their mask is on. Again, just keep in mind that a similar problem occurs in people without any hearing problems, but sometimes a regular hearing test wouldnt hurt.

Listening to someone with a covered mouth

One of the helping aspects of understanding speech is actually seeing a person's mouth and the way their lips move. You can’t benefit from this aspect when a person talking to you is wearing a mask. While seeing a person's mouth you can also see their smile, or anger or other expressions in which they communicate, which consequently helps you to better understand the topic. Yet again, when a person is wearing a mask you are not able to capture that and result in losing the meaning or inflection of the speech. Of course, there will be a difference in saying “I am well” with a smile and saying the same with a tired look.

Alternative solutions

While technologies cannot really make a great help in this scenario, it should be really accepted to ask the person who is talking to you to make some clarification on what he/she said. You can as well let them know about your hearing problems to be able to freely communicate and ask questions.

Concluding thoughts

COVID-19 has changed a lot in our lives and “gifted” us a new reality to handle. The best that we can do is to identify the possible problems raised by essential protection methods from this virus, such as wearing a mask, and try to find some alternative solutions that will not affect the way we interact and communicate with others.