Use the microphone

It's the beginning of the semester, and employees at my institution have been organizing and attending seminars on making our spaces more inclusive.   I'm really grooving to the stuff we're talking about.  Like, I thought my classes were already "inclusive" because . . . well, because I don't deliberately exclude people.  And also, to be honest, because think I'm awesome and so therefore everything I touch is awesome.    It has to automatically follow that all my students should naturally thrive in the wonderful systems I've created, and if they don't thrive, it's because somehow they've chosen to be deficient.

So it's good to get a bit of a reality check on the kinds of assumptions I make unconsciously, and how a conscious examination shows that I've missed some big areas for improving.  To whit: not everyone sees as well as I do. Not everyone hears as well as I do.  Not everyone understands the terms in my syllabus, or has the ability to focus intensely, or feels comfortable in a roomful of strangers, the way I do.  And if I keep those differences in mind, I can do things with my syllabus and the structure of my class to make it easier for everyone to see and hear and process and digest and collaborate better.

We've been thinking about this for a while at my school, and by a nice coincidence, we're also thinking about inclusivity and disability in our church Sunday School class.  And after a while of thinking about this, and then attending the big math meetings with all those math talks, I just want to say . . .

If there's a microphone, people, USE IT.

That's the real point of this blog post:  use the microphone.  Do not say, "I'll just speak loud so people can hear me without it."  Don't do that.  Use the microphone.

Prewash is reading Same Lake, Different Boat,
a book that we're reading in our Sunday School at church,
except she's having a hard time understanding what the book says. 

 Let's assume for a moment that you're right, and you're so loud that every single person in the room can hear you without the microphone.  It's still the case that the room is likely to contain a bunch of other noise that competes for people's attention: fans humming, chairs scraping, people coughing or whispering to one another.  The act of focusing on one noise among many takes a bunch of mental energy.  Do you really want to sap the energy of your listeners?

In fact, just last week I read a study that says that people who are losing their hearing, but who don't get hearing aides, are more likely to develop dementia than people who get hearing aids.  No one is sure why, yet, but one theory is that the stress of sorting out meaning from imperfectly heard words just wears out the old brain.  So even if everyone can hear you, it's worth it to use that microphone so people can hear you more easily.

Even if she gets closer, she can't make out the words.
Maybe she needs glasses?

But the truth is likely that your assumption is wrong, and not everyone can hear you.   Speakers usually stand in a privileged part of the room that's particularly quiet, but the listeners aren't always so lucky.  Some people are sitting near a fan that's humming, and some people are sitting near the open door where voices come in from outside, and other people are seated right in front of two people who are having a whispered conversation, so people who would totally be able to hear you if they were as lucky as you to be in that quiet spot . . . well, they're not that lucky, and they can't hear your voice.

Even more, assuming that everyone in the room can hear you is like assuming that everyone in the room ought to be able to climb stairs.  Hearing aids are smaller and more discrete than ever, and people who don't hear well and don't wear hearing aids usually don't go around broadcasting the fact that they're just missing huge parts of the conversation.  When you speak without the microphone, it's like crossing the street at the curb instead of the ramp; even if most people can follow you, some people won't.   In fact, sometimes people can link their hearing aids into the sound system, so the microphone transmits directly to them in a way that no voice -- however loud -- can make its way across a room and into their ears.

So use the microphone.  It's not an insult to you and your speaking voice to have to resort to that, it's a warm way to welcome everyone in the room equally into the conversation.