Van Life Is For Everyone: Easy Ways to Embark on Your Own Adventures When You're Deaf or Hard of Hearing

Van life can be exhilarating—the freedom of the road, the thrill of never sleeping in the same place, and the excitement of exploring new locales make it a great way to bolster your overall health and well-being. The simple fact that spending more time outdoors can sharpen your cognitive skills, lift your mood, and even give you more opportunities to get more exercise in means it can truly help you live in the moment. It’s no wonder that more than three million people in the US now consider themselves van lifers—a sharp increase from 1.9 million in 2020. 

However, it’s also true that van life can be challenging. Whether it’s finding somewhere to park, the high chances of something breaking down and needing repair, or the costs of tricking out your vehicle for the road, van life realities can make it just that much more complex to kickstart your own adventures. 

Yet that’s also the reason why there are so many resources to make starting your journeys easier. The right tools, suppliers, and practices can make your preparations for the road more seamless and stress-free. That opens up van life to pretty much anyone—including the 11 million Americans who consider themselves deaf or hard of hearing. Of course, you’ll need to take a few extra precautions to ensure you can more safely enjoy your camper van experiences. Here are a few things you may want to try to this end:

Strategically Select Assistive Fevices

To stay safe and happy on the road, you’ll need all your senses. That’s especially crucial given that even mild hearing impairments can raise your risk of running into accidents by over 140%. And though you’ll obviously already be bringing your hearing aids along, you may want to be more strategic and pack the kind that offers features more useful for your van life adventures.

That makes AI hearing aids a great place to start. Those from Starkey, one of the world’s top five hearing aid manufacturers, can reduce feedback while enhancing situational awareness by providing omnidirectional hearing assistance. They’re also waterproof and can last for 38 hours on a single charge, making them durable enough for the rigors van life can throw your way. 

As a deaf or hard-of-hearing individual, you’ll also heavily rely on your other senses to get by. Clear eyesight will be especially vital for both enjoying the landscapes you discover and staying safe on the road. That's why you may want to consider additional assistive devices that can correct any refractive errors you may also have—like nearsightedness—and shield you from the sun’s eye-damaging UV rays.

If you want to be strategic about it, though, consider getting the kind that can help your eyes and ears simultaneously, such as a pair of hearing aid glasses. Nuance Audio uses beamforming technology to provide clear hearing depending on where you’re facing to ensure better situational awareness. It then embeds that technology into glasses frames that can accommodate prescription lenses as well as photochromic lens coatings, which turn dark outdoors and lighten indoors. By combining these functionalities into a single device, these glasses can help you more conveniently use all your senses on your adventures. 

Join The Right Communities 

Of course, you’ll want to outfit your van and conduct your adventures your way. If you want more curated advice on how to go about van life with a hearing impairment, though, you may want to turn to people who understand where you’re coming from.

Joining communities of van lifers can give you the support and assistance you need to adequately prepare for your journey and go through it without a hitch—all in line with your specific medical needs. In that way, it can provide the same benefits as that of a more general peer-to-peer support group for hearing loss, which offers the resources and empowerment you need to navigate daily challenges. 

The efforts made by campervan supplier Agile Offroad exemplify just how effectively those benefits can extend to van life. In August 2024, the company took on hard-of-hearing advocate Gregg Pappas as its latest Agile Offroad Ambassador. Also known as DeafRoamer, Pappas’ advocacy is to make van life more accessible to everyone. By starting his journey with Agile Offroad—which is known for its diverse van lifer community—he was able to benefit from its aid in tricking out his van to meet his needs.

In a single week, the supplier took Pappas’ NCV3 Sprinter and upgraded it with its Offroad RIP Kit, ARB Sprinter Air Locker, AO/Alcon Big Brake Upgrade, and a high-capacity Sprinter fuel tank. Agile Offroad also took time to learn sign language to better communicate with Pappas and welcome him at various events, such as its Annual Padres Outing. In turn, Pappas educated its employees on how to better communicate with and meet the needs of other deaf and hard-of-hearing van lifers. That just goes to show that, if you look in the right place, you’ll find communities that can enrich your van life experiences even further.

Constantly Share Your Location With Trusted Friends & Family

Van life can take you to some far-flung places and expose you to a wide range of circumstances, so you’ll want to make safety your top priority. In particular, you can’t always rely on cell service to contact someone in an emergency—and even if you can, communication barriers may mean you may not be able to get emergency service personnel to you in time before you run into any adverse outcomes. That risk heightens even further with studies confirming that van lifers are more likely to run into dangerous situations. 

That’s why constantly sharing your location with loved ones can be especially beneficial. The best way to start is by coming up with an itinerary for your adventures. Though it doesn’t need to be very detailed—and you definitely don’t need to follow it strictly—it should generally explain where you’ll be at a particular time and for how long. Communicate this itinerary with people you trust at home.

If you’re heading somewhere more rural, be sure to let them know when they can expect to hear from you and when they should start calling emergency services. This simple step alone can significantly enhance your safety as a deaf or hard-of-hearing van lifer.