Nicola Field still remembers her fascination when she heard for the first time the pitter patter accompanying her footsteps as she walked down a wooden staircase. She was six years old and she had just been fitted with her first hearing aid.
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Ms Field has hearing loss caused by a genetic disorder and recalled she had lots of ear infections as a child.
"As a child, I had a lot more hearing, but as I grew older and into my teens, my hearing was still deteriorating but in a way that was a blessing because I got all the speech and language and all the sounds and what have you and knew what they meant and knew what they were associated with," she said.
Today, she has severe to profound hearing loss in her right ear and moderate to severe hearing loss in her left.
Like many others, Ms Field has managed to champion her hearing loss.
"I do rely on visual cues and I'm a very visual person. My favourite saying is, 'If I can't see you, I can't hear you'," she said. "I find it very difficult if someone's talking behind me because although I can hear them, that's not the natural way for me to hear. You are really wired to be able to hear with your eyes just as much as your ears."
She said it is sometimes difficult for people with hearing loss to receive support because of the invisible nature of the condition.
"When you have a hearing loss and you can function normally, you don't get that support because people don't realise you need it because it's so invisible," she said. "People don't realise the isolation it causes and the everyday difficulties people come up against simply because you cannot communicate effectively and easily."
But she said advances in technology had made it easier for people with hearing loss to communicate.
She has a Bluetooth device that enables music and phone calls to be connected directly to her hearing aids from her mobile phone. She also has a Roger device - a wireless microphone that allows her to hear and understand more speech over distance such as lectures or meetings or in noisy environments such as a cafe.
Ms Field said she is also in the fortunate position where she gets to see other people overcoming their own hearing loss through her work at Australian Hearing.
Hearing Awareness Week starts on Sunday and Australian Hearing is offering free hearing checks next week at Charnwood Pharmacy on Monday, Capital Chemist Chisholm on Tuesday, Amcal Max Queanbeyan on Wednesday, Deafness Resource Centre at the Hellenic Club in Phillip on Thursday and Terry White Chemists in Belconnen on Friday.
