The Standpoint of Persons with Hearing Loss on Work Disparities and Workplace Accommodations

Objectives: The perspectives of persons who live and work with hearing loss were sought to examine workplace accommodation challenges and strategies.

Participants: A convenience sample of seven older adults with hearing loss participated in in-depth interviews.

Methods: A systematic grounded theory approach informed the study design and analysis. Categories of facilitators and challenges in the data were identified through axial coding and clustering. Core categories of social processes emerged through constant comparison and theoretical sampling of the data to reveal the actions and interactions used to negotiate or implement adaptations or workplace accommodations.

Results: Persons with hearing loss use a realm of strategies to live and work with a hearing loss. Social processes used to navigate the challenges to working with hearing loss and to manage optimal work performance included: self-accommodation, self-advocacy, self-management of hearing loss, and lobbying.

Conclusions: Success in overcoming work disparities for persons with hearing loss requires individuals to take control of identifying their needs within the workplace and at home, and to negotiate for specific accommodations. These strategies and processes draw attention to the need for a repository on contextualized workplace accommodation strategies for improving communication and hearing in the workplace. Further to this a best practice guide for use by workers, employers, and work rehabilitation and health care workers is indicated.