Challenges of Restaurants for the Hearing Impaired

January 2025

I am a member of the Saddlebrooke Hearing Discussion Group. In this month’s article I would like to discuss the challenges of hearing in restaurants if you are hearing impaired. Modern restaurants tend to be noisy not only due to the chatter of the patrons but also due to the background music and perhaps the noises from the kitchen. Most restaurants tend to have hard service floors and high ceilings which are not helpful in dampening noise. In fact, many restaurant owners prefer a noisy environment as that gives the impression that the restaurant is a fun and enjoyable experience. 

I would like to share some suggestions that my wife and I have based on our experiences at local restaurants. I wear a hearing aid in my left ear and have a cochlear implant in my right ear. Prior to getting the implant it was very difficult for me to hear in restaurants. Hearing aids are good at amplifying sound, but they don’t help with clarity, especially with all the competing sounds in restaurants. Prior to getting my implant I relied on apps that would convert the spoken word to text. I found those apps to be challenging as they tended to pick up parts of other conversations. 

Now that I have my implant I can usually hear fairly well if we are out by ourselves or with just one other couple. We typically try to sit in a booth. Whether I am in a booth or table, I try to sit so that I am facing a wall. The microphones in my hearing devices are going to focus on the speaker in front of me so it is best if there is no one behind that person. If a booth is not available, we try, if possible, to find a table that is away from larger groups. We also like to go out around 3:00 when the restaurants tend to be less crowded. We call that “Linner” since it is between lunch and dinner. 

Of course, 3:00 doesn’t work at the HOA restaurants. At the Preserve the hostess, Mary Lee, tries to seat us at a table that not as noisy. At MVBG we try to sit in the dining room and hopefully grab a booth if one is available. We find the Road Runner to be challenging unless the weather allows us to sit outside. If making reservations upstairs in HOA1 we request to be seated in a quiet location. 

To locate quiet venues, I would recommend checking out SoundPrint web site. It allows you to discover quieter venues in Tucson. Download their app’s internal decibel meter to measure the noise level of any venue. There is also an option to submit noise readings to the SoundPrint database. If you have questions or would like to recommend a quiet restaurant, my contact email is tgaule@outlook.com