Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing Swimmers and Their Coaches Improvise Past Communication Barriers in the Pool

A small qualitative study from South Africa documents how competitive deaf and hard-of-hearing swimmers and their coaches build their own toolkit of made-up signs, lip reading, and writing because hearing aids cannot be worn in the water and Sign Language is rarely shared by both sides.

Sport coaching depends on a constant stream of small corrections. Drop the elbow on this stroke. Push off harder. Slow your stroke rate. For a deaf or hard-of-hearing athlete, getting that information mid-practice is not straightforward. The pool is loud, the water blurs vision, and the device they rely on for everyday hearing has been pulled out and left in a bag at the side.

A team of researchers at the University of the Witwatersrand set out to listen to both sides of that relationship. They asked competitive deaf and hard-of-hearing swimmers and the people coaching them how communication actually happens in training and at meets, what works, and what gets in the way.

Background: Why the Researchers Looked at This

Deaf sport at the elite level is its own ecosystem. There are Deaflympics, dedicated federations, and qualifying standards that require comparable training to mainstream competitive sport. But most deaf and hard-of-hearing athletes train in mainstream pools, with mainstream coaches, alongside hearing peers. The interpersonal mechanics of how that works have not been studied much, especially in countries where Sign Language is not part of standard teacher or coach training.

Audiologists and rehabilitation specialists tend to focus on the device side of hearing loss: how well an aid amplifies, how clearly speech in noise can be understood, how well a cochlear implant restores environmental sound. Less attention has been paid to the social side, particularly the question of what happens when the device must come off. Swimming sits squarely in that gap. Hearing aids and cochlear implant external processors are not designed to be worn while submerged, and there are real risks to wearing them poolside if they get splashed.

The authors wanted to capture, in the participants' own words, how this gets handled in practice and what the experience feels like for the athletes inside it.

How the Study Was Done

This was a qualitative study, not a survey of large numbers. The researchers used non-probability purposive sampling, meaning they recruited people specifically because they fit the profile of interest, rather than drawing a random sample. The final group included eight competitive deaf and hard-of-hearing swimmers and three coaches, for a total of 11 participants.

Each participant completed an online questionnaire designed to elicit detailed personal accounts. The research design was exploratory phenomenological, a method that focuses on the lived experience of a small group rather than statistical generalization. The goal was to surface common themes and capture the texture of communication in this specific setting.

Findings should therefore be read as descriptions of how this group of people experiences swimming, not as figures that can be projected onto every deaf athlete or every coach.

What the Researchers Found

Three communication tools came up most often as facilitators. Lip reading was widely used during pool-deck conversations. Coaches and swimmers also relied on a vocabulary of made-up signs they had developed together over time, specific to their training situation. Writing, often on a whiteboard or phone screen, served as backup when the made-up gestures were not enough.

South African Sign Language was rarely the primary tool. Even though some swimmers used Sign Language as their first language, most coaches did not know it. That mismatch came up repeatedly as a source of friction. When a swimmer's natural language is not shared with the coach, every important conversation has to go through a workaround, and nuance gets lost.

Two specific barriers stood out. The first was the unavoidable removal of amplification devices in the water, which leaves athletes effectively without their normal hearing for the duration of every set. The second was the absence of visual alerting systems in most swimming venues. Without visual cues, swimmers cannot reliably catch start signals, end-of-set whistles, or coach calls from the deck.

In one striking contrast, a swimmer paired with a deaf coach described their communication as "seamless." Shared experience of hearing loss meant the pair had built mutual fluency in whatever modes worked best for them, without one side asking the other to adapt.

Inclusivity in the broader swimming environment was described as present but uneven. Several participants reported feeling isolated at points, even within teams that aimed to be welcoming.

What It Means for People with Hearing Loss

For deaf and hard-of-hearing athletes and the coaches who work with them, the practical message is simple. Building a shared vocabulary of signs and visual signals early in the relationship pays off, because once practice starts there is little chance to negotiate communication on the fly. Visual alerting systems at venues, even simple ones like flashing lights for starts, would also remove a daily source of disadvantage.

The study also makes a wider point about who is in the room. When a deaf coach was paired with a deaf swimmer, communication stopped being a problem to solve. That points to the value of recruiting and training more deaf and hard-of-hearing coaches at every level of the sport.

Outside the pool, the daily life of these same athletes still depends on how visible and comfortable their hearing technology feels. Many people who wear hearing aids report that the social visibility of a device shapes their willingness to wear it consistently in school, in social settings, and at work.

When Visibility Is the Barrier to Wearing the Device

The study highlights how much hearing aid use is shaped by social context, not just by audiology. People with hearing loss often weigh whether a device will draw attention before they decide to put it in. For an adult who has mild to moderate age-related hearing loss and wants amplification that is genuinely hard to spot, the visibility of the device is sometimes the single biggest factor.

Panda Stealth is built around that concern. The device weighs roughly 2.3 grams and sits inside the ear canal, with the goal of being effectively invisible to anyone looking at the wearer in conversation. It uses 12-band smart noise reduction, and the charging case doubles as a wireless remote so the user can adjust the device without reaching for the ear. It carries a five-year warranty and a 45-day return window. Panda Stealth is intended for adults with mild to moderate loss who are choosing not to wear a more visible device because of how it looks.

A device this small is a daily-wear product, not a swimming aid. Anyone with severe or profound loss, and athletes who need specialized solutions for sport, are still best served by a clinical fitting with an audiologist who knows the wearer's full audiogram and lifestyle.

Limitations of This Research

The sample size is very small, just 11 people, and was recruited through purposive sampling rather than at random. The findings describe how this specific group of South African swimmers and coaches experience communication and should not be read as statistically representative of every deaf athlete. Online questionnaire responses also carry their own bias, since participants self-select what they share and may not capture in-the-moment nuance.

The abstract did not list a specific funding source or competing interests. As a qualitative study, the value lies in surfacing themes for future, larger investigations rather than producing prevalence figures.

What to Do With This

If you coach, train, or live alongside a deaf or hard-of-hearing swimmer, the study is a reminder that the communication system around the athlete is something you build deliberately. If you are someone with hearing loss who has held back from wearing a device because of how it looks, the same study is a reminder that those concerns are widely shared and worth taking seriously when choosing a device.

Citation: Pillay D, Lewington C. Communication experiences of deaf and hearing-impaired competitive swimmers and their coaches in South Africa. The South African Journal of Communication Disorders. 2026. Retrieved from PubMed. https://doi.org/10.4102/sajcd.v73i1.1142