Volume 20 Issue 12

HOH-LD-News
Vol. 20, Issue 12
September 18, 2004

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Table of Contents
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- Article 1: Growing a Healthy "Hybrid" Relationship - Part 3
- Article 2: SHHH Exhibit Floor - Part 10

- Article 4: Hearing-impaired Birders Turn up the Chirp
- Classifieds: One Education Opportunity
- Contact Information and Disclaimers

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Contact information and disclaimers are at the end of this newsletter.
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- Article 1: Growing a Healthy "Hybrid" Relationship - Part 3
By Laine Waggoner, M.A., M.S.
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Editor: Char and I have known Laine and Rex Waggoner for several years now, and have even presented with them at a national conference! We are all very interested in promoting communication between people with hearing loss and the important folks in their lives. Here's Part three of a recent article that reveals some of their wisdom.

As appeared in Spring '04 issue of Hearing Health. Reprinted with permission. For more information on HH and to subscribe to online and print editions, call 202.887.5850 or visit www.hearinghealthmag.com.

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Innovate & Customize

How do we successfully convey not only our hopes and dreams but also the stresses and strains of daily living? Rex and I fervently promote one idea: Do whatever works. Here are a few of the solutions that we have created to address our communication challenges.

Getting my attention: As I rely heavily on speechreading to understand what people are saying, others must alert me so I can look at their face as they talk. That may mean that I must be prepared to interrupt a task or activity already underway. It may also mean that the person initiating the conversation has to physically come to me. In fact, I think that is the polite thing to do.
It took a while for me to explain these realities to Rex. After learning not to try to talk to me from another room, he began poking me to get my attention when I was engrossed in a task. This annoyed me because it seemed to indicate impatience. We discussed an alternative and soon he began touching me gently and waiting for me to reach a stopping point.

Sometimes he goes a step further and kisses me on the back of the neck. Now, that gets my attention! We've creatively replaced irritation with fun and potential romance.

Using Supplemental Technology: As my hearing loss increased, I found myself retreating from the things I enjoyed most, like parties, the theater, etc., and I was dragging my gregarious husband away with me. I stopped the cycle through the use of assistive listening devices. Once again we can both engage in and enjoy social and community activities.

There is also a new technology available in the offices of some hearing health professionals that allows both partners to actually see how the hearing aids are working. This tool graphically illustrates how well the HOH partner's hearing aids match their audiogram. The visual impression may add to your hearing partner's understanding of your experience.

Finding Support: An excellent resource for overcoming the communication hurdle is involvement in a hearing loss support group. Through their participation, HOH individuals can build skills in assertiveness and empowerment with the additional benefit of reducing feelings of isolation. Armed with newfound strength as well as information about hearing loss, they are equipped to assertively enhance their relationships through open communication and developing creative strategies.

I counsel many mature adults new to hearing loss who frequently report that hearing family members cause them the greatest emotional pain. Few adult children have the information, patience or perspective to appreciate the challenges experienced by their frustrated parents. But when their parents involve them in discussion groups or at least share what they have learned through participating, better communication is the result.

In spite of our lengthy journey, Rex and I still consider ourselves "works in progress" in our continuing attempt to communicate openly and effectively while keeping our sense of humor. We are certain that many readers face similar challenges and are developing their own creative solutions. Whatever their shape or form, the most important part is developing and revising them together.

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- Article 2: SHHH Exhibit Floor - Part 10
By Cheryl Heppner
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Editor: One of the best things about hearing loss conventions is the exhibit floor, where vendors of hearing loss products display their wares. Cheryl Heppner is a master at exploring the booths to discover all the new stuff. Here's the next installment of her report on this year's exhibits at the SHHH convention.

This report discusses:
- National Captioning Institute - Help Desk
- Cochlear Americas

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National Captioning Institute - Help Desk

Our Fairfax County neighbors Ben Glenn and Steve Scher of the National Captioning Institute, were displaying their Help Desk information and playing some captioned videos. I had a chance to talk with them about two captioning problems reported several times recently at NVRC.

The first relates to non-captioned videos, some of them purchased at Wal-Mart, that were in boxes that said they were captioned. The fault is not Wal-Mart's, it's that the videos are coming from a distributor other than the movie's original studio. If you purchase a captioned video from Warner Brothers, Paramount, Sony and other studios, the video should be a copy from a captioned master copy. Other companies may purchase the rights to make copies, but these copies may not use the captioned master. Or they may be a copy of a copy, or even a copy of a copy of a copy. You get the picture. In the process, the captions may become unreadable and or even be stripped. Good Times video, an independent company, is one of those that is known to have produced videos that lack captions.

The second problem is with videos or DVDs that are captioned, but the captioning is in Spanish. We've had this reported by people renting from Blockbuster. As in the uncaptioned video case, it may not be the fault of Blockbuster. It seems that we consumers will have to be more vocal about the problem and work with the industry to standardize how videos and DVDs are labeled, defining what those labels mean. We now see captions labeled as subtitles, and vice versa. Or we see labels that say 'captions for the hearing impaired'. Or we see boxes and cases missing labels for captions or subtitles, or having the labels when the content of the video or DVD is something different.

More info: www.ncicap.org or www.ncihelpdesk.org

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Cochlear Americas

Cochlear Americas continues to introduce new technology and step up its education and training materials. Cochlear audiologist Amy Popp, who works with implant center audiologists in programming the implant processors, told me about Cochlear's fifth advance for those using the older Nucleus 22 processors; the ESPrit 3G. The Esprit 3G has improvements in sound processing, battery life and advanced wireless capability. Plus they have 11 cool BTE colors to choose from, a switch for built-in telecoil, and a Whisper Setting to help bring a speaker's quiet voice closer to you.

I was fascinated by their new Sound and Beyond software, based on House Ear Institute and Tigerspeech Technology's "Computer Assisted Speech Training". The $290 CD-ROM is for new Cochlear Nucleus recipients, experienced CI recipients who want to improve their listening skills, and adults with hearing loss in the severe/profound range who want to practice listening skills at home. It can be used by those with other brands of cochlear implants.

There are several different language/skill modules. I looked at the one for environmental sounds. You can click to hear a cat's meow, church bell, ball bouncing, and many other sounds. As you master them, the program gets progressively more difficult. Some of the other modules are ones that help you discriminate words in male and female voices, vowel recognition, and consonant recognition. There's a music appreciation module where you listen to different instruments and also to melodies. Messages guide your progress to the next level, and reports help you monitor your progress.

Cochlear also has:
- New videos with a resource guide to hearing rehabilitation for Nucleus Cochlear implant recipients: Start Listening for Adults and Start Listening for Children.
- A Nucleus Forum for implant users and candidates to share information and experiences and help one another solve problems. Go to www.cochlearamericas.com and click on "Recipent Support" then "Community" and follow the steps to join.
- Case studies on Cochlear Implant and Contralateral Hearing Aid Use, Pediatric Bilateral Cochlear Implants, Prelingually Deafened Adult Cochlear Implant.
- A Nucleus 3 System fact sheet on MRI safety of cochlear implants.

For info: 800-523-5798; www.cochlear.com

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(c)2004 by Northern Virginia Resource Center for Deaf and Hard of Hearing Persons (NVRC), www.nvrc.org. When sharing this information, please ensure credit is given to NVRC.

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------- Eye on Washington --------------------------------
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Stay informed and protect your rights! The Eye on
Washington (EOW) is a national advocacy ezine published by
the National Association of the Deaf (NAD) that focuses on
activities occuring on Capitol Hill that affect deaf and
hard of hearing civil rights.

The EOW is open to all, members and non-members. It is
distributed once a month, sometimes more.
http://www.nad.org/ezine/ecommadmin.html
----------------------------------------------------------

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- Article 4: Hearing-impaired Birders Turn up the Chirp
By Jerry Uhlman
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Editor: Don't you have to hear well to be a bird-watcher? It's called "birdwatching", but don't you need to hear their calls to find and help identify them? So how can a person with hearing loss be a successful birdwatcher?

This article originally appeared in the Richmond Times-Dispatch and is reprinted with permission.

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Across the United States, there are nearly 46 million bird-watchers, according to a recent report from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. The hobby is enjoyed by more than one in five adults.

This popular pastime demands good eyesight as well as hearing for the fullest enjoyment. Birders usually rely on binoculars to spot and identify various species, and quality binoculars often can compensate for vision shortcomings.

Hearing loss is a different problem. As bird-watchers age, many face gradual hearing loss that decreases the ability to identify species by songs and calls.

Most hearing aids amplify frequencies that improve the lower sound registers of speech but are relatively ineffective with the high frequencies of birds.

Some birders have turned to auditory-assisting devices adapted to aid outdoor sportsmen and military or search-and-rescue operations. But most outdoors-oriented devices rely on bulky earphone headsets and handheld, cone-shaped dishes to draw in sounds to amplify for the wearer.

Two second-generation digitally enhanced mechanical aids, however, offer more promise. Walker's Digital Game Ear is a device worn behind one ear that is designed to digitally process sound for clarity with little or no distortion.

A plastic tube connects the digital unit to an earplug that fits in the ear canal. Powered by a button-cell battery, it increases hearing up to seven times, weighs less than a quarter ounce and contains a handy volume control and on-off switch.

The other is SongFinder, a new unit designed especially for birders with high-frequency hearing loss.

I recently accompanied two Richmond Audubon Society members who have high-frequency hearing loss, John Coe and Bob Coles, into the field to evaluate the Game Ear and SongFinder.

We chose two familiar birding sites. Each tried the Game Ear first and then the SongFinder near quiet spots as well as those with plenty of background noise.

Both found that although Walker's Digital Game Ear amplified some bird songs, many high-frequency songs remained out of earshot.

Because the unit is used in only one ear, neither tester found it helpful in judging the distance or direction of the amplified call. Because all sounds are amplified equally, many unwanted background sounds such as leaves underfoot, watercraft on the river and nearby voices often overpowered and drowned out high-pitched bird songs.

In contrast to the tiny Game Ear fitted behind one ear, the SongFinder base unit is clipped to a belt, and earphones rest over both ears. The unit has a switch that lowers digitized sound to three levels, allowing the user to customize the pitch. The lower the level, the more sounds enter the range of the human voice and are audible to the user.

Both testers were amazed by the sounds that flooded their ears with the SongFinder. Each birder could hear songs and calls that had been beyond their range of hearing.

To Coe, who seemed to have less hearing loss, many of the digitized bird songs sounded like crows and dogs barking. Coe found the digitally altered bird songs and calls unreal and distracting.

A whole new realm of sound, however, reached Coles' ears - a cornucopia of unfamiliar and exciting chirping, twittering and warbling.

Coles has had significant hearing loss over the years that limits his recognition of bird calls to those loudest and nearest. Once he had become accustomed to the initial cacophony of sound that the SongFinder brought to his ears, he marveled at what he had missed and was amazed at the layers of competing bird calls that filled the air.

In our admittedly limited field tests, the Game Ear amplified sound that assisted both Audubon testers to hear out-of-range bird songs. But because it boosted all surrounding sounds, the Game Ear would be most effective in a quiet habitat where unwanted sound did not compete.

In the field, the utility of the SongFinder will depend on the degree of birder's hearing loss. Individuals with marked loss may be delighted to again hear the songs and calls enjoyed long ago or discover those never heard before. Birders with less severe hearing loss will probably find the digitized sound distracting and unhelpful.

Both units deserve a trial to compensate for high-frequency hearing loss and restore the enjoyment of out-of-range bird songs.

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- Classifieds
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One Education Opportunity appear in this issue. (Ads appear after this brief table of contents.)

Education Opportunity 1
Play Therapy and Sandtray Training
Chesapeake Beach Professional Seminars

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Education Opportunity 1
Play Therapy and Sandtray Training
Chesapeake Beach Professional Seminars
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CHESAPEAKE BEACH PROFESSIONAL SEMINARS
is interested in offering play therapy and sandtray training to deaf and hard of hearing clinicians who provide mental health services to children and families.

Interpreters using American Sign Language available.

If you work at a facility where there are a number of deaf and hard of hearing clinicians or you have access to a number of such clinicians, we could have the training at your facility.

Please get in touch with us immediately to talk about possibilities.
E-mail: cbps@radix.net.
website: www.cbpseminars.com

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- Contact Information and Disclaimers
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