Experts recommend wearing a mask in public places and it has become the new norm. This new norm comes with some sound challenges.

Face masks help keep everyone safe. Health experts have recommended wearing a mask whenever in public places and it has become the new norm. However, this new norm comes with some ‘sound challenges’. Wearing a face mask reduces the transmission of respiratory droplets which protects us but unfortunately, the presence of a mask also reduces sound when we speak. But by how much? This exact question has been investigated, and results are shown above. You can easily see that wearing a mask does reduce sounds in the high frequencies. In practice, this means that when you are wearing a mask, people can hear you talking but might complain that it is difficult to understand what you are saying.

High frequency sounds, such as ‘s’ and ‘sh’, contribute significantly to our understanding of spoken language. When they are no longer heard or seen, communication suffers. So, this new mask wearing reality requires us to make adaptations. There are numerous ways we can help those understand us and reduce their listening effort - wearing a transparent mask and reducing background noise can help. And when speaking, we can raise the volume of our voice, speak slower and use clear speech.