France Encourages Use Of Transparent Masks To Help Those With Hearing Loss

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Suzy Margueron (seated, center) who advocates for people with hearing loss, likes to gather with friends in Paris’ Luxembourg Gardens. All have transparent masks, but say it’s others who should be wearing them too.

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«If you have a mask, I can’t understand anything. It’s horrible. I must guess. All the time, I must guess,» says Suzy Margueron.

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Sophie Cluzel, France’s secretary of state in charge of disability issues, demonstrates a transparent mask in her office.

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Cluzel says for now, the transparent masks are expensive — around $12 each — but they can be washed 25 times. And when production increases, she says, prices will come down. The French government hopes that 100,000 masks will soon be produced every month.

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Françoise de Brugada says difficulties in comprehension are not just about reading lips. «It’s all the muscles of the face, and the eyes and the nose and the expressions,» she says. «You can see all that moving, and it makes you understand much more.»

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Christophe Bertrand wears an inexpensive mask made of a single plastic sheet, manufactured by his Simon company.

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Christophe Bertrand wears an inexpensive mask made of a single plastic sheet, manufactured by his Simon company.

Eleanor Beardsley/NPR

Christophe Bertrand is trying to make that happen with an affordable see-through mask. His Simon company, which normally produces other plastic products such as cases and folders, has patented a transparent mask with prices ranging between 25 cents and 40 cents each.

Bertrand has sold 25,000 transparent masks to customers in France, and is waiting for European Union health standards approval to market the masks worldwide.

The mask, he says, is made of one sheet of transparent plastic. «The advantage to be manufactured out of only one single material is that our mask is also recyclable,» he says.

Bertrand believes that see-through masks can be an advantage for everyone. By allowing people to see each other’s faces, he says, these masks help maintain the human connection needed to get through this pandemic.

• hard of hearing
• masks
• deaf
• coronavirus
• France