Beyond Hearing Part 1: The Personal Cost of Missing a Word

Summary

In Part 1 of this special three-part series on hearing loss and communication, CareLab welcomes Chase and John Prieve, the father-son co-founders of Hi There Solutions. They share the deeply personal experiences that shaped their mission to make accessible communication a right rather than a privilege. From a family history rooted in the Deaf community to life-changing hearing loss and the challenges faced by a deaf friend, this episode explores the often-invisible realities of hearing loss and the inspiration behind creating innovative solutions that help people stay connected and never miss a word.

Key Questions Answered

Transcript

Brandy Archie
Hi everybody, welcome to CareLab. We have something new and exciting for this episode. We're actually doing a three part series. We have been listening to your feedback about wanting maybe shorter episodes and having them more often. Y'all have been really liking our hot takes. And so we are going to make this transition here today with our guests. And this is gonna come in three different episodes.

So that means you're going to come back and hear parts two and three. So Amelia's going to let you know what's going on for this first episode.

Emilia Bourland
Yes, so in this first little bite-sized chunk we're giving you in this three-part series, we're focusing on hearing loss and communication. That's what the whole series is about. We're going to hear the deeply personal story that started a journey for a father and son team. So when their everyday conversation started becoming complicated, navigating the world became complicated, this episode is all about helping understand, you know, the emotional frustration.

the complications of hearing loss, which is so often an invisible disability for people. And we're going to hear how all of this eventually started a mission to help millions of people communicate more clearly and stay connected.

Brandy Archie
And we are so grateful to be able to do this together with Chase Preeve and John Preeve, son and father duo, co-founders at Hide Their Solutions, a company that was founded on the belief that deaf and hard of hearing accessible communication should be a right instead of the privilege that it currently is. Guys, thanks for joining us.

Chase And John Prieve
Awesome. Hi Brandy. Hi Amelia. Thank you so much for having us on here today. Like Brandy said, I'm Chase Pree, founder of Hi There Solutions. With me is my dad and co-founder, John Pree. We're here to make the world more accessible for the deaf part of your community. Hey Brandy. Hi Amelia.

Emilia Bourland
Hi, hi. Well, thanks

so much for joining us today. Thanks so much for being part of this series. As I was saying before, hearing loss is something that can be really, really debilitating for people, but it is not something that is obvious to the world around us, right? And so it's really a unique thing. We're happy to talk about it here today. But of course, in this first part of the series, we would love to hear just what...

How did you all come to this? What made this issue important for you?

Chase And John Prieve
You bet. Let me start with our family history and our connection to the deaf and hard of hearing community because that's where things started for us as a company. My grandparents, Walter and Anna Preeve, so Chase's great grandparents, Walter and Anna were both Big D deaf, not audible, signers only. Walter attended the Wisconsin School for the Deaf. Now this is a hundred years ago.

And they were married. They had five children. father, Richard Priest, so Chase's grandfather, they had five children, one son, four daughters. And they were married like a hundred years ago. Then the Great Depression hit. And think of...

individuals during the Great Depression, how hard it was to have a job, keep a job, and provide for your family. Well, Walter and Anna were both big D. Doff. They were not audible, signers only, and it was a struggle. In fact, it became such a struggle during the Great Depression, they ended up actually placing all five of their children into what we would call today foster homes. But they were essentially dairy farms in Northwest Wisconsin.

and the family never came back together again, sadly. Now fast forward about six or seven years ago, I had what's called a cholesteatoma. It's a tumor. It was in my middle ear and required extensive surgery to remove it. Well, as a result of that surgery, I was left with a severe hearing loss and I'm a bilateral hearing aid user. So.

Between Walter and Anna, Big D, Duff, and myself with a severe hearing loss, hard of hearing, that's our family connection to the deaf and hard of hearing community. However, the inspiration for our company, our mission, and our why, that came from Chase. Correct. I have a friend, she was born hearing. Her name's Eliza, but at the age of four, she went deaf overnight due to a lung infection.

Imagine how scary that would be for her at four years old. It's the last time you hear your parents natural voice again You're like, you know, good night Eliza. We love you wake up the next morning the world's silent and you don't know why Scary right and now on the flip side her parents, you know, I've got you know, they're she's four years old their daughter's not responding She's upset. She's crying. You don't know what's going on. They went and got a bunch of tests done eventually it turns out Eliza went deaf She's a cochlear implant user

Emilia Bourland
Yeah.

Chase And John Prieve
reads lips, only understands about 30 % of the conversation being had, does not know sign language. In fact, it's a common misconception that all deaf hard of hearing individuals know American Sign Language. There's 52 million deaf hard of hearing in the United States. Do you guys want to take a guess as to how many actually know American Sign Language?

Close. Amelia?

Emilia Bourland
8 %?

Chase And John Prieve
Okay, you guys are a lot closer than what the what other numbers have been thrown out less than 1%. How she know a

Brandy Archie
That's still just

Emilia Bourland
⁓ wow. If this were the prices right, we would both have busted on that. ⁓ That's, we were so,

Brandy Archie
a very small percentage that can sign. We'd be both be lost over. We're both over.

Chase And John Prieve
Yeah.

I'm sorry. ⁓

Emilia Bourland
so far over. Wow, less than 1%. That's incredible.

Chase And John Prieve
And then think about this too. Do you know how many official sign language dialects there are in the United States? Four. So yes. Yes. So if you know American sign language, great, awesome. There's three other ones in addition to it. So she does not know sign. So again, does not sign, reads lips, can't use a telephone, relies on face-to-face communication, like ⁓ FaceTime.

Emilia Bourland
I did not know that.

Chase And John Prieve
or Zoom calls, something like that. So a few years ago, Eliza was on vacation with her family in Mexico and she simply just wanted to FaceTime me, show me around the house, the beach, catch up. And I wanted to hear about her vacation. So I'm like, okay, go ahead. Eliza FaceTimes me. And it was just awful for her. First of all, my audio was coming through just fine, but problem is she couldn't hear me. Then the video feed,

They didn't matter if she was on wifi or cellular. My video would be either just cut out, but the audio would keep going or my face would freeze and I just have this weird look on my face. So she can't read my lips. She can't hear me. Then there's no captions on FaceTime. So it was very, it was just a very poor experience and she got upset, rightfully so. And we hung up and we just texted the rest of the time. like, you know, dad.

Apple really prides itself on innovation inclusivity. Why don't they just do something as common sense or FaceTime and make it accessible for a deaf hard of hearing individual, right? So we thought that through, like we gotta do something else. We gotta do something for someone like Eliza. So we came up with our company name, hi there, our waving hand logo, less than an hour after that conversation. And so.

Brandy Archie
That's quick.

Chase And John Prieve
It was very quick. like, I don't wait around. I don't wait around. If I see a problem, I'm going to go fix it. Right? So that.

Emilia Bourland
Yeah.

Brandy Archie
You

think

that says a lot towards like you were kind of primed for that too because as you guys are talking about your story about how ⁓ being deaf or hard of hearing has transitioned, has made huge changes in each of your lives and the generation before y'alls ⁓ to just be like tuned in and dialed into that. And I also think it's interesting that you said that ⁓ Apple prides itself on accessibility because I actually kind of think they're making things to make life easier for

the majority and that also happens to make it easier in some instances for people who have challenges and it's because we don't always have that like focus on the person who has the hardest challenge and solving that problem for them and then that being coming easier you know for me or whatever where it's loud and I might want to have captions because my kids are screaming in the background right and so we kind of have like merged those two things together but actually they're very separate.

Chase And John Prieve
Sure.

Exactly. companies are making strides in including accessibility, which is fantastic. My caveat is why didn't you think of this group from the beginning when you were creating products, right? Why is it just an afterthought? It's like building a skyscraper. You have steps, but you forget to put in elevators, right? And it shouldn't be like that. So we created solutions from the get-go that are accessible for deaf, hard of hearing.

Our other solution came about from the story that I had. Well, I didn't have it. Eliza and her boyfriend, who also happens to be deaf, ⁓ it came about from this. So Eliza, you wouldn't know she was deaf unless she had her cochlear implants on or she was trying to like looking at your lips, trying to read. She had years and years of speech therapy. So her deaf accent is very minimal. Her boyfriend on the other hand, who is deaf, he has a very heavy deaf accent.

because his family didn't have the resources to give him speech therapy, right? So they're together. They had this thing as a couple that they used to do every Sunday after they went to church, which was we go to church, then we're going to go to get Jamba Juice and get smoothies. Awesome. We've all been to Jamba Juice. It's super noisy in there. Blenders, hard surfaces, and then just people talking. It can be hard to get your order right.

Now imagine you're deaf and hard of hearing trying to communicate. So they went to this job and used to do the same one they've been going to for a couple of years. Eliza goes in, places her order, no problem. Again, does not have the deaf accent, very, very small one, very easy to understand her. Boyfriend comes up and it was just a horrible experience for the poor guy. The person behind the counter was trying to place his order and they're having a very awkward back and forth. Eventually the person behind the counter, the worker,

pulling at the boyfriend, looked at Eliza and very rudely asked her, hey, what does he want? I can't understand him. Calling out the fact, you know, he's deaf and I'm sure that person's heart was in the right place trying to get his order, but it was like, you don't have a means to communicate with somebody like this. We can do better. So we came up with our other solution, Just Talk, from that experience that bridges the communication gap between a deaf-hearted hearing person and a hearing individual.

in a live face-to-face conversation.

Emilia Bourland
So I wanna, before we kind of wrap up this first part of the series, I want to pivot back a little bit to John, I know you've said, you sort of, I'm gonna put your feet to the fire a little bit here. You sort of glossed over your own experience with this. You had a very sudden experience with hearing loss yourself. How did that impact you?

Chase And John Prieve
Well, ⁓ it impacted me and my family and those around me. I'm a sales team leader and in fact it impacts my direct reports as well, just from a communication standpoint. In other words, of course I'm a bilateral hearing aid user, but the batteries on hearing aids don't last all day long. They've got to be recharged up, things like that.

Emilia Bourland
And they're not

perfect either. It's not the same as having the hearing that you were born with, that you had before you had those tumors. Yeah, so.

Brandy Archie
you had before.

Chase And John Prieve
Right.

Absolutely. So there's just a functional part of dealing with hearing loss from an equipment standpoint or instrument, hearing instrument standpoint. And then it's, know, individuals in an individual conversation, people need to be really directly across from me. So I can not only use the hearing aid technology, but also then just like Eliza.

try and follow along lip reading a bit to the extent that I can and really try to fill in contextually what is being said. What Chase maybe left out on Eliza or anyone that relies on lip reading, they only pick up about 30 % of the spoken words. So they fill in the rest contextually and they just miss an awful lot.

As it relates to, even though yes, an individual may have hearing aids in, you go into a loud environment like a restaurant, an airport, you really shouldn't have your hearing aids in. It's so overwhelming that you really can't understand anything that's going on. So Amelia, to your point, the instruments are not perfect. There's a band aid trying to ⁓ increase volume of

the sounds around you and captions on either movies or discussions like this on Zoom calls, Google Meet calls, et cetera, are very, very helpful in order to follow along because you just don't, even with hearing aids, you just are not picking up every sense of the word. We have a tagline in our company, never miss a word.

And that's kind of our mission and our why to help deaf or hard of hearing individuals to never miss a word so that they can be included from an inclusivity ⁓ and following along very, very precisely in every conversation that they have.

Brandy Archie
Well, I think we're probably going to wrap it right there for this first part of our segment. And you guys got to come back to listen to the second part, which we'll talk about, how do people deal with this right now? What solutions exist in the world? ⁓ How are they challenging? ⁓ And hopefully ⁓ answer some of the challenges that you all are having when you either have a hard of hearing or are working with somebody or caring for somebody or participating with somebody who also has hearing loss. So make sure you tune in for the next one. See you soon.

Chase And John Prieve
See ya.

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