Photo credit: Jeremy Keith licensed under CC BY 2.0
by Daniel Fink, MD, Chair, The Quiet Coalition
This report from the United Kingdom discusses expensive new headphones which can help someone understand conversations in a noisy restaurant.
This is the wrong answer to the restaurant noise problem.
Why should someone have to spend £400–about $530 at current exchange rates–just to be able to understand a conversation in a restaurant in London?
The right answer is making restaurants quieter, by reducing background music levels and adding sound-absorbing materials, so everyone can have a conversation without straining to speak or to be heard.
Noisy restaurants are a major disability rights issue for those with hearing loss, tinnitus, and hyperacusis. And it is an important issue for older Americans, many of whom have significant (25-40 decibel) hearing loss.
I will be speaking about the problem of restaurant noise at the December 2017 meeting of the Acoustical Society of America in New Orleans.
