THE LinkedIn profile image of culture and behavioural change consultant Simon Houghton shows him wearing a black mask with white writing: “I’m deaf. I can’t read your lips with your mask on.”

Houghton, based in Reading in the UK, has significant hearing loss and relies heavily on lipreading when communicating — a skill which became even harder to use during the pandemic when everyone wore masks. And while the rise of virtual meetings has helped to some extent (people still turn their cameras off, blocking lipreading), workplaces still don’t cater well enough to people with hidden conditions like deafness or severe hearing loss.

To boost awareness, Houghton launched the social enterprise WeSupportDeafAwareness during the pandemic. His message is clear: Not enough is done to support deaf workers, many of whom comprise the population. Consider that 1.5 billion people — almost 20 pe cent of the global population — live with hearing loss, according to the latest World Health Organization calculations.

Houghton has had to pay a heavy price for this lack of inclusivity at work. One of his worst memories, he still recalls. “I was working for a Big Four management consultancy firm and was thrown off a project because I misheard an action during a client meeting,” he said.

Although the incident occurred in 2001 Houghton believes workplace bias is still rife. “It would be great to think that with diversity and inclusion having such a high profile in the boardroom these days, this sort of thing wouldn’t happen in 2022, but talking to other deaf folk has confirmed that this is still an issue.

“Technological advances can be experienced as technological setbacks for deaf people if access is not taken into consideration from the very beginning.”

Part of the challenge for colleagues and employers, Houghton suggests, is that deafness is a hidden disability, meaning it can be difficult to tell if someone has a hearing problem. “When someone does the wrong thing they are often considered stupid, rather than deaf, and where speech is good colleagues aren’t reminded that their co-worker has a hearing loss — and an unconscious bias around that person forms,” he continued.

Houghton has recently teamed up with Kevin Ashley, founder and CEO of learning management system myAko, to teach 1 million people in the UK about deaf awareness. “The campaign starts with education and organisations being aware of the difficulties faced by people with a hearing disability,” said Ashley. “Aside from specific training, there is now a greater understanding that mask-wearing is a significant barrier to deaf individuals’ ability to hear, and more alternatives — such as Perspex screens — are making it easier to communicate without masks.”

Mask-wearing aside, the shift to remote working during the novel coronavirus crisis was positive for deaf people, at least initially. Videoconferencing, in particular, has been an enormous benefit. “A large percentage of deaf and hard of hearing people use lipreading to understand what is being said,” explained Houghton. However, colleagues often turned off their cameras when so-called Zoom fatigue set in.

“Today, video calls are common in the hybrid working set-up but there are often a good 20-40 per cent of people who refuse to turn their camera on,” he added. “Others will only put their camera on when speaking. This is okay, but you lose the sense of connectedness when they are not talking and can’t read their body language.”

The hard of hearing have long been marginalised, argues Dr Joseph Murray, president of the World Federation of the Deaf. Moreover, deaf communities have endured a complicated relationship with technology. They still rue the transition from silent films to the ‘talkies’ “as a moment when we went from having full access to mainstream entertainment to no access whatsoever” he said.

Dr Murray points out that the invention of the telephone also “shut deaf people out of communication and job opportunities” for many decades. “With this history in mind,” he added, “we are very aware that technological advances can be experienced as technological setbacks for deaf people if access is not taken into consideration from the very beginning.”