Not many months into rehabilitation after my cochlear implant switch on, I was finding how good it was at damping down background noise and prioritising voice. It’s an aspect of having a CI that continues to deliver and delight. It’s also something that often gives me an advantage over my hearing peers, which feels astonishing!

On a recent day out with my sister, whose hearing is normal, I became aware that she was struggling to hear me in the busy café where we were having lunch. Lots of chat from other tables and the noise of food and drink being prepared and served were making conversation hard for her. We’ve all been there – leaning forward to try to hear better, watching the speaker’s lips, asking for repetition. Yet the environment was no problem for me, thanks to the technological wizardry of my CI. 

On to a gallery for an exhibition. We were invited to scan a QR code and listen to the audio guide on our phones, something I hadn’t done before. It was crystal clear – brilliant! But my sister struggled, both with navigating the audio guide and hearing it with her phone at her ear and the competing sounds of a busy gallery. 

The day gave me pause for thought about accessibility. Technology is enabling me, but the move to digital in so many areas of our lives is also leaving some behind. It turns out we could have picked up a booklet with a transcript of the audio guide, but I only discovered this by visiting the gallery website afterwards. It’s too easy to assume that everyone has a smartphone and will want to use it in this way. We had another accessibility issue too. We needed to use lifts rather than stairs.  This was more challenging than we imagined, an out-of-action lift necessitating waiting for a staff member to take us on a long walk to a staff lift. 

A recent visit to the Wellcome Collection reminded me how well they cater for visitors. I found myself looking through -and stroking – a tactile book designed to accompany a collection. It wasn’t intended for me, but it was so engagingly presented. The Wellcome Collection seems to be exemplary in its efforts to be inclusive to all visitors – you can read more about that on their accessibility page. 

Not a day goes by when I don’t give thanks for my CI and notice the impact it’s had on my life in myriad ways. Two and a half years on, I feel I’m still experiencing ‘firsts’, or nearly firsts! I have been to a couple of large events since having my CI, and found it made a vast difference, but it still feels quite novel, and I don’t take it for granted that I will be able to hear easily. I wondered how I would fare at a training event for communications professionals – none of them known to me. In my pre-CI days, I would have been pleased at the prospect of meeting new people before remembering that I wouldn’t hear them in a room full of conversation, taking myself off to spend breaks alone. Now, I was able to jump in, initiate conversation and chat to people as we queued for our lunch. What a difference. My colleague made me laugh though, responding to a suggested networking prompt involving finding someone with a matching badge number with “absolutely not!”. It’s not just about hearing but also about personality and preference, of course! I too got to a point where I wanted a bit of quiet, but it was great not to be held back by an inability to hear.

Running for the bus at the end of the day with my sister was the first time I nearly lost my CI processor! Seeing the posters in the audiology department about the cost of replacing a processor, I wondered how it was possible to lose one. But somehow, as I raced down the pavement, it flew off my head. Thank goodness it didn’t hit the road to be pulverised by a passing vehicle, or shoot down a drain. I screeched to a halt, ran back to grab it and even made the bus, thanks to the kind driver who saw me and waited. Where would I be without it?