SHHH Exhibits
By Cheryl Heppner and the NVRC Staff
Editor: One of the best things about the hearing loss conventions is
a chance to see what's new in the hearing loss world. Cheryl Heppner and
the NVRC staff did a great job of capturing the excitement of the
exhibit floor, as you'll see in this series of reports.
If you'd like to share this article, please be sure to credit NVRC.
(See credit at the end of the article.)
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Visual Language Interpreting
(VLI)
SoundAid Hearing Aid Warranties
RERC on Hearing
Enhancement Survey
MED-EL Corporation
Institute for Persons Who are Hard of Hearing or Deaf
Wireless Center of Excellence
SoundClarity
Dry & Store
Oticon
Ear Gear
Hearing Solutions of Fairfax, P.C.
Starkey
Soundbytes
AUDIENT
American Association of the Deaf-Blind
Caption
First, Inc.
Energizer
America Online
Alexander Graham Bell Association for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing
Cochlear
Midwest Center for Postsecondary Outreach
American Academy of Audiology
PEPNet
American Association of Adult Musicians with Hearing Loss
(AAMHL)
Sorenson IP Relay
(siprelay)
Quick Caption
Audex
Rochester Institute of Technology
(RIT) and NTID
Sonovation
Deafpager.com/Deafbuy.com
ClearSounds
American Speech-Language-Hearing Association
(ASHA)
Pure Direct Sound
Center for Hearing Loss Help
Dogs for the Deaf, Inc.
InSight Cinema
National Temporal Bone, Hearing & Balance Pathology Resource
Registry
SHHH's American Academy of Hearing Loss Support Specialists
The EAR Foundation
Telecommunications Industry Association
(TIA)
This Washington, DC sign language interpreter agency recently won a
contract to provide interpreting for the staff of the Social Security
Administration in the Baltimore area. VLI's Bill Kendrick said that its
specialty is conference interpreting. In 2004 it provided interpreters
for the AG Bell and NAD conferences, and this year it was responsible
for coordinating interpreters for the Registry of Interpreters for the
Deaf convention. VLI also provides CART services. www.vli-dc.com; info@vli-dc.com.
Sound Aid warranties are for hearing aids, bone anchored hearing
processors, and cochlear implant processors. They also cover tinnitus
instruments and some FM receivers used with hearing aids and cochlear
implants. The company offers three kinds of warranties - comprehensive
("for anything that could ever happen"), loss and damage, and
damage & component failure. They have four different rates, with the
lowest for the conventional analog hearing aids and the highest for the
advanced high technology digital sound processing instruments, bone
anchored hearing aid processors, and cochlear implant processors.
There's also a different rate for models under 5 years of age and older
models. Some deductibles are charged if you have more than one loss,
your lost aid is over 5 years old, or you are a resident of "high
risk facilities" such as nursing homes, assisted living facilities,
group homes, or hospices. www.soundaid.com or 1-800-525-7936.
The RERC is interested in experiences with - and opinions of -
assistive listening devices. Assistive listening devices work with your
hearing aid or cochlear implant to make it easier for you to understand
speech in meetings, at church, at the movies, in classes, and in many
other situations. Are they working for you? What suggestions do you
have? The results will be shared with professionals, companies, and
other consumers. To take the online survey: https://securedgspp.gallaudet.edu/ald/
MED-EL's Nathan Schepker said the company's new Pulsar cochlear
implant has lots of platforms for future technology as researchers push
to improve the understanding of music and the ability to understand
speech in noise. The company is now looking at new strategies to
accomplish this. MED-EL's "Symphony of Technology" packet
includes a CD in English and Spanish, "How a Cochlear Implant
Works," and booklets on Understanding Cochlear Implants, Pulsar and
Research, and Tempo Speech Processor. www.medel.com; implants@medelus.com
Evelyn Cherow, Executive Director of this Institute at National
University in La Jolla, CA, has a lot going on with online courses, such
as four-week, 40-hour courses - captioned - on Understanding Hearing
Loss and Living with Hearing Loss. The cost is $295 each, and curriculum
developers are Dr. Henry Ilecki and Dr. Sam Trychin. And there's a
Leadership Education Program to grow a network of persons who are deaf
and hard of hearing. Also a Sign Language Communication Skills program,
some Career Development programs for adults who are hard of hearing or
deaf, continuing education courses for professionals and families on
Enhancing Educational Outcomes for children and youth ages 5-21, and on
Improving Early Hearing Detection and Intervention Service Delivery for
infants and young children who are hard of hearing or deaf. ihhd.nu.edu;
1-877-532-7606.
At this series of exhibits, convention-goers could get a sneak
preview and try new phones and text devices by Cingular, Verizon,
Motorola, Samsung, Sony Ericsson, Sprint, Nokia, LG, T-Mobile, Nextel,
UT Starcom, and RIM. The Center's ad read: "Talk by phone. Some new
hearing aids are designed to be usable with wireless devices with lower
RF emissions. These wireless devices, identified by an 'M3' or 'M4'
rating on the box, soon will be available from major manufacturers and
carriers. Talk by text. Today's wireless devices are light, versatile,
and packed with features to make writing easier. Some have full QWERTY
keyboards, all have predictive text for faster typing, and may support
e-mail and instant messaging services. And with the popularity of
text-only communication, some carriers have plans for talk with
text-only so you don't have to pay for voice features and calls you may
not use." www.atis.org/hac/index.asp; www.accesswireless.org
George and Tony Khal, back again this year, feature Clarity brand
products and those from many other manufacturers in their 45-page
catalog. The products run the range from telephones/TTYs and telephone
accessories to assistive listening devices and all kinds of alerting and
paging devices. They were doing a brisk business selling the new
PockeTalker, which looked like a silver pager, for $99 as a convention
special. Among the other new devices they had on display this year were
the Clarity C600 phone - hearing aid compatible, amplifies up to 30 dB,
two-hour battery power backup, and lighted keypad for $149.
www.soundclarity.com; 1-888-477-2995 V/TTY.
Katy Pindzola conducted the famous fishbowl test of Dry & Store
hearing aid conditioning system two days in a row, with two new
in-the-ear (ITE) hearing aids and one behind-the-ear (BTE) provided by
Siemens. The hearing aids, with the batteries still in them, were
whistling away when they were plopped into a fishbowl, and the whistling
slowly died over 5 to 10 seconds. During the day, the hearing aids
stayed submerged. At night, they were opened up, all the excess water
was shaken out, and all three were set in one Dry & Store Global
unit with their battery doors open and batteries still in place. The
next morning, the Dry & Store had automatically shut off after 8
hours and the hearing aids were again whistling nicely. Dry & Store
also came to the rescue of two people - one with a hearing aid and one
with a cochlear implant - who were having moisture problems. After their
devices spent 30-45 minutes in a Dry & Store units, both were
believers and became customers. www.dryandstore.com; info@dryandstore.com
or 1-800-327-8547.
