The rumble of the idle plane’s engine hums from the end of the aerobridge. A buzz of eager passengers make their way down the tunnel to board. Everyone stops in their place. All of a sudden, the boarding passengers turn around in a hurry, heading in the opposite direction of the plane. One woman, boarding pass in hand, looks around and wonders why the passengers are leaving. She taps a person passing by on the arm and asks what is happening.

For Rae Walker, the announcement remained unheard. “They said the tunnel is overloaded and they think it’s going to collapse,” she says.

In a world where verbal announcements remain the default, the deaf and hard of hearing, who rely heavily on visual communication, can often be left behind.

Imagine, one relaxing weekend, you’re browsing the aisles of clothes in your favourite shop. Testing the soft textures of the fabric with a brush of your hand and perhaps wondering if the colour matches the new jacket you bought. Suddenly, there’s a tap on your shoulder. A retail worker is urgently ushering you towards a mass of people being directed to an evacuation point. The blaring, repetitive beeps resound with urgency. Ear piercing for others, but instead you’re met with silence.

No flashing lights, only sound. Unaware of the severity of the emergency. “You’re visually on high alert and it actually puts you in danger,” Walker says.

One in five Australians live with some form of hearing loss, a figure the World Health Organisation estimates will rise to one in four by 2050 due to an aging population, noise exposure and prolonged gaps in early detection.

After working in education for decades, Walker saw how inaccessible environments are the biggest barriers to participation and opportunities for people with disabilities. When she became profoundly deaf later in life, she gained a whole new perspective and now advocates for people who are deaf and hard of hearing. Walker is the chair of Deafness Forum Australia and program manager of accessibility and inclusion at the University of Western Australia.

“The greatest barriers are often not my hearing loss, but environments designed without considering people like me, where no adjustments are made to accommodate my communication needs,” she says.

“I realised that disability doesn’t prevent participation; inaccessible environments and attitudes are the biggest barriers to participation. I wanted to move beyond helping individuals navigate barriers to changing the systems that create them.”

When environments, organisations and community spaces lack accessibility, navigating communication barriers for deaf and hard of hearing starts even before they leave home.

When going to the cinema, will there be subtitles on the screen? When ordering a steaming cup of coffee, will their name be heard? Will a café be too reverberant? Will there be spaces outside? Will the lighting be too low? Will a specialist’s voice sound muffled because they’re wearing a mask? What if a boarding call at the airport is missed? Or a train station stop announcement isn’t heard?

Audiologist Caitlin Gardiner says hearing loss exists on a spectrum and while hearing devices improve access to sound and communication, normal hearing isn’t restored. This is one of the most common misconceptions she’s encountered.

“Each person’s experience differs depending on the degree and type of loss, age of onset, how long they have lived with it, their communication needs, the environmental and social supports available to them, and many more factors,” Gardiner says.

“Hearing aids are an aid. They don’t return hearing to normal, and their benefit is limited by the health and function of the ear and auditory system. Similarly, someone who has had a hip replacement will have an improvement in their walking ability, but they are unlikely to be able to run a marathon, which is much more challenging.”

The years before I got my own hearing aids, my partner insisted with growing frustration that I should get my hearing checked. I believed I was fine – that my family was just soft spoken and that my partner tended to mumble.

After a referral to an ENT specialist and a CT scan, we found the cause. Otosclerosis, the locking together of the auditory ossicles (the three small bones in the middle ear), which blocks sounds traveling from the middle ear to the inner ear. According to Expressions Australia, it is one of the most prominent causes of hearing loss in adults, affecting one in 200 people.

My preconceived notions that hearing loss isn’t something I’d have to worry about until I was older were wiped away. After having hearing aids for two years and experiencing a gradual decline, my hearing feels at war with sounds – a combat of environmental factors that make communication and listening to others more challenging.

A trip to the supermarket, where the music and beeps at the self-serve checkouts overpower my partner’s voice as he walks beside me. Or surrounding voices being louder than the people I’m trying to listen to during group discussions at university. While there are settings on my hearing aid app that can improve this – a simple swipe to “conversation in crowd” if I’m in a bustling restaurant, or settling on “music” when attending a concert to drown out the background noise. These situations often still need navigating.

Gardiner explains how a range of environments can be communication barriers for people with hearing loss, even with hearing aids, assistive listening devices and/or implants.

“Modern hearing aids continuously analyse the listening environment, considering factors such as overall loudness, whether speech is present and where it is coming from, and the level of background noise. Then automatically adjusts settings such as amplification, directionality, and noise reduction according to the sound scene,” she says.

“Background noise is one of the most common challenges, especially in settings where there is a lot of reverberation, multiple conversations and music.”

Communication becomes unnecessarily difficult and with a recipe of poor acoustics, background noise and inadequate lighting, it can contribute to listening fatigue.

Filtering words and switching from conversations can be a passive process for people with hearing, almost second nature. But for the deaf and hard of hearing, it requires considerable effort.

“When you’re deaf and hard of hearing and have a cochlear implant, you have to stop listening and go ‘what did you say?’, then go back and think oh my god what have I missed?’,” Walker says.

In this physically exhausting process, hypervigilance is key. “You need to be seated like you’re in the armed forces, so you can see everything and make sure you’re not missing anything,” Walker says.

Even the smallest of changes make a difference in creating inclusive and accessible spaces for people with hearing loss. Gardiner says a significant difference can be made by designing for accessibility from the start.

“Practical changes include reducing background noise where possible, improving room acoustics with more soft furnishings and less hard surfaces, avoiding unnecessarily loud music or announcements and providing quiet spaces or seating away from noise sources,” she says.

Gardiner says changes aiming to create spaces offering information that doesn’t solely rely on audio announcements would make a significant difference. These include providing live captions for events, meeting and public announcements, offering Auslan interpreting on request, providing written agendas and embedding hearing loops (telecoil or auracast) within environments ensuring clear labelling and availability.

While the journey to making accessible spaces more embedded into environments is still ongoing, there are spaces that have made adaptations to become more inclusive for the deaf and hard of hearing.

During the 2025 National Disability Strategy Forum, Deafness Forum Australia advocated for improvements to be made to make airports more accessible. Walker experienced the new changes at Qantas firsthand, with inflight entertainment including English captions; boarding processes being supported by visual displays instead of only audio announcements; and phone notifications with boarding announcements.

A piece of technology called Auracast sends audio broadcast to compatible hearing aids and has been embedded into spaces such as Perth Airport Terminal 4 and Event Cinemas at Innaloo. Hearing loops have also been installed at His Majesty’s Theatre and at Transperth train and bus stations.

“Auracast is for sound augmentation, where you can go into a space and hear better,” Walker says. “People would be a lot less isolated and will go out more often because they can hear better.”

Walker hopes for a future that moves away from a culture of asking for adjustments to one where inclusion is how society operates. A world where accessibility is the norm and people no longer need to advocate for what should already be available.

“Inclusion isn’t about fixing people with hearing loss. It’s about removing the barriers that prevent us from participating equally,” she says.