I don't know how to judge that, it's kind of a situational question in regards to the type of person dreama is explaining.
I think I'm somewhat moderate-severe HoH in classification. I tend to rely on lip reading if the speaker's voice isn't loud enough.
When I'm talking to a person and it's about random gabber that isn't really important, like for example someone trying to sell me this nice book of the Bodhisatvi and Buddism. I may purposely pretend that I heard them but I wasn't really listening and just nodding in agreement, even if I purposely did not hear what they said.
If it's something important that I know I missed, I'll often tell the speaker to repeat themselves.
But if it's in an environment where your disability doesn't pertain to the rest of the environment, I'll be courteous and keep an arm's length of how much I deserve of the "spotlight" for my needs. Like the question I referred to previously, nowadays I don't just ignore it and guess what he meant later, I ask him to repeat himself when either the time is good, or when he's free of being in charge of other individual's times.
I don't go around telling everyone I meet at first glance that "Hi, my name is so and so and I'm HH" the first instant.. because I personally do not feel the need to do so. Only when the situation requires that I think they are entitled to know of my disability, then I will explain it. Even at my last job, they didn't know I was HH and I never mentioned it to them - yet I got by without any issues for 1.5 years. There wasn't much other need to do so either, since everything was done IT related through messaging and computers. I got my schedules and itinerary on a PDA and text messaging, completion of the task was written down in the same manner.
I don't think I'm living in denial though.. I mean I accept the fact that I'm HH but I don't go around letting everyone know that I am. I'd rather keep it to myself until something occurrs to where the person I'm acquainted with needs to know that I'm HH you know?