I have auditory processing disorder and my mother has incident, comparatively mild, hearing impairment. The first time she phoned me after she got her new hearing aid (or maybe I phoned her, can't remember), we basically spent half of the conversation asking each other "What did you say?" On her end, she hadn't gotten the hang of her hearing aid. On my end, I was accustomed to being able to easily understand her because I'm very used to her speech patterns, but her speech patterns had altered because of her hearing impairment. Since then, she's figured out the proper settings for her hearing aid and I can understand her again and she can understand me. My point is, maybe the hearing aid townies have a relatively mild hearing impairment, such that getting the right settings on their hearing aids can alleviate their functional challenges.
