Hearing Expo aims to empower people of all abilities through community and technology

Michelle McConaghy wants to normalize hearing loss.

It’s something that affects far more people than one might think, she said, especially in a state with such a large aging population.

McConaghy, executive director of the Northeast Deaf and Hard of Hearing Services, thinks the stigma of hearing loss can be overcome.

“There is a community,” she said. “And it’s about connecting. And you don’t have to do this alone. It takes some people seven to ten years before they do something about their hearing loss.”

To celebrate its 25th anniversary, the organization is hosting a Hearing Exposition in Concord on Saturday, April 11. The event, which will take place at the Boys and Girls Club, aims to reach people with a wide array of hearing challenges and broaden their exposure to new resources and assistive technologies.

“We just want to focus on reaching out to people on the whole spectrum of hearing loss, regardless of how you identify yourself, whether you wear hearing aids, whether you don’t wear hearing aids, whether you identify as deaf or as hard of hearing,” said McConaghy, who was born deaf.

There will be interpreters present, as well as looping technology to connect to people’s hearing aids if they choose. Audiologists will also be on-site to meet with interested attendees, especially if people are looking for hearing aid adjustments.

“Oftentimes people might get the hearing aid, and then they get so frustrated they put it in a drawer,” said McConaghy. “That’s where we really want people to say, ‘Hey, go back to audiology. Empower yourself.’”

Amy Evans, who runs the NH Hears initiative as a means of facilitating communication to help people of different abilities hear better, said hearing aids are far more complex than people tend to think.

“It’s not just on or off, up or down volume, ” she said. “Glasses too, people can really understand this, that they have a prescription and they might have astigmatism or one eye is different than the other. Same for hearing. It’s just more complex.”

Evans has age-related hearing loss. She tried out different hearing aids before finding ones that best suited her needs. She learned that tending to her hearing could help her overall health, and that was the push she needed to wear her hearing aids faithfully.

“If you don’t use the full extent of your brain, your brain will start to atrophy, hence dementia,” she said. “Particular kinds of hearing loss really affect that more than others, and it’s important to get it diagnosed and treated so that you hear all the things. And your brain is like a word processor. It’s always updating. It’s always working in the background.”

Both Evans and McConaghy benefit from quiet, well-lit spaces in order to best communicate. They agree that these conditions actually help everyone and seek to educate people about these advantages.

McConaghy, who uses lip-reading as a technique in many conversations, said that louder spaces make things more challenging.

“It can be very fatiguing when you’re trying to focus and hear,” she said. “I mean, imagine you’re going to a bar, you’re finally there, you’re putting so much of your focus on trying to hear what you’re hearing and trying to fill that gap – because there’s a lot of words that sound alike and you’re trying to fill that gap in the sentence.”

The pair doesn’t want the size of the Expo to deter anyone from coming because they’re worried about not being able to hear. They’ve given a lot of thought to making it feel accessible.

“Sometimes that’s really daunting for people,” said Evans. “They think, ‘Well, I’m not going to go to this big hall because I’m not going to be able to hear. It’s stressful, it’s embarrassing.’”

Northeast Deaf and Hard of Hearing Services serves a broad audience with technological assistance, interpretation, education, community outreach and more. Hearing challenges affect people in all phases of life. The event, complete with different presentations and an American Sign Language zone, is geared to the whole spectrum of hearing, making it the first of its kind to take place in the Granite State.

“I really would hope to have a good turnout so that it shows that this should be done as a yearly event,” said McConaghy. “There are no services out there, like what we do here. We did not get funding from the state regarding the support of hearing loss.”

Event details: Saturday, April 11, 1-5 p.m. at the Boys and Girls Club, located at 55 Bradley St. in Concord. Visit https://ndhhs.org/ to learn more.

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