technology and people with hearing loss
Regardless of how people feel about their hearing loss, most would
agree that they are lucky to be coping with hearing loss today, rather
than in the past. And most
would also agree that one of the big reasons for these feelings is
that the technological advances of the past few years are of great
benefit to hearing impaired persons. From computers to TTYs to cochlear implants
to hair cell regeneration, technology to assist persons with hearing
loss has exploded in recent years, and will likely continue to explode
in the future.
Acoustics is the study of sound and how
it behaves in an environment. A good acoustic environment is of huge
importance to people with hearing loss.
Alerting
devices
include things like alarm clocks, smoke alarms, and doorbells. You're
probably very familiar with them. But the standard ones all rely on
sound, so they provide little value to persons with hearing loss.
Fortunately, modern technology has been able to provide devices that
provide these functions for hard of hearing, late deafened, and oral
deaf persons.
Assistive listening devices
(ALDs) encompass a wide variety of
devices whose purpose is to improve the audibility of sound in
particular situations. Assistive listening devices are extremely beneficial to
hard of hearing, late deafened, or oral deaf persons who retain some residual hearing.
The Auditory Brainstem Implant is a cousin
of the Cochlear Implant that is used when the auditory nerve is not
viable.
Cochlear implants
are relatively recent inventions that can partially restore the ability
to process sound for people with hearing loss. They seem to be
especially effective for late-deafened people who have had some usable
hearing in recent years. Cochlear implants are somewhat controversial
within the Deaf Community, but with their growing success has come
growing acceptance.
Hearing aids are one of
the mainstays of personal communication for people with hearing loss.
There are an incredible variety of devices available. One of the more
recent advances is the digital hearing aid, which promises the ability
to more closely match your hearing aid to your hearing loss.
Instant Messaging (IM) isn't a service that
is specifically intended for people with hearing loss, but it is one
that is much appreciated and used by our community.
Speech recognition
is a promising technology that has the capability to really open up
communications to people with hearing loss. Although it is not currently
commercially viable, the progress in recent years has been astounding.
An accurate, usable system in the next few years in not out of the
question.
The telephone is one of the
basic communications tools of modern society, and the ability to use a
voice telephone greatly eases the communications access problem. There
are a large variety of devices that can assist people who have a hearing
loss to use the telephone.
TTYs or TDDs are devices that allow persons with hearing loss to
communicate without using speech over telephone lines. They looking
something like a typewriter; instead of speaking, the person with
hearing loss types what they want to say. instead of listening, the
person with hearing loss reads what the other person has typed.
A modern telecommunications device that is taking the hearing loss
world by storm is the two way
pager. The hearing loss equivalent of the cell phone, these devices
provide mobile communications to hard of hearing and deaf consumers.
Here's our
coverage of all kinds of captioning (TV, movies, theater, radio, etc.)
Visual Communications
refers to the practice of providing visual (textual) representations of
the audio information that is currently lost on people with hearing
loss.
March 2001 - Norwegian scientists able to screen
out unwanted noise.
December 2001 - Disney provides wireless captioning
devices.
July 2002 - If you want to know what's going on with hearing aid
technology, the Exhibit Hall at the SHHH Convention
is a great place to learn. It took Cheryl four articles to record all
the information she gathered in her five hour visit!
October 2003 - Here's an interesting article about a TDI convention
workshop entitled "Catching
up to the Future". In it Dr. Gregg Vanderheiden discusses ways
of designing complete accessibility into future devices.
September 2004 - If you'd like a good overview of current
telecommunications topics, Marjie Page's primer might
be just the thing.
September 2004 - 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?
May 2005 - This Western Symposium on Deafness (WSD) workshop entitled
"I Can SEE What You
Hear" provided a nice overview of the various technologies that
are provide communications access for people with hearing loss. The
three main discussion areas were Classroom Access, Communication
Technologies, and Signaling Devices. The workshop was presented by Pat
Billies and Dr. Marcia Kolvitz.
May 2006 - New Help For Hearing Loss
May 2006 - High-tech gadgets help deaf hear
well
November 2006 - Hearing Assistive Technology and
Audiologic Rehabilitation
November 2006 - Robotics Helps Non-Signing
Gallaudet Students Learn
January 2007 - An
MP3 player for the deaf
May 2007 - First Australian Child Gets ABI
June 2007 - Auditory
Nerve Implant Next Big Hearing Loss Breakthrough?
August 2007 - New Headphones Allow Parents to
Monitor Listening Levels
September 2007 - TDI
Conference Workshop - New Toys and Tools: Speech Recognition and Video
Chat
January 2008 - House Ear Institute's Exciting
Hearing Loss Projects
February 2008 - Samsung Product Searches TV Content
Using Caption Data
March 2008 - Youngest Patient Receives Auditory
Brainstem Implant (ABI)
March 2008 -
Using Nanotechnology and
Nanoparticles to Improve Hearing
March 2008 -
UNC Performs Auditory Brainstem Implant
June 2008 -
Auditory Brainstem Implant Allows Child to
Communicate
June 2008 -
Implants moving up the neurological chain
June 2008 -
Nuisance Noise Silenced by an Acoustic Cloak
July 2008 -
Musical frequencies turned into tactile sensations
for deaf
July 2008 - Audience Introduces Industry-First
Voice Processor Based on Human Hearing System
October 2008 -
Artificial cochlea: an example of structural
processing
March 2009 - Canadian device allows deaf to 'hear' music through skin
August 2009 - Device Allows Deaf Blind Folks to
Communicate with Hearing Folks
October 2009 - Device Helps Deaf and Blind Cross
Streets Safely
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
March 2001
The ability to screen out unwanted sounds has long been a dream of
people with hearing loss. Recent advances in the science of acoustics
have partially achieved this goal, and some modern hearing aids have the
ability to selectively screen sounds. Now it appears that Norwegian
scientists have significantly advanced the science of acoustic
filtering.
New Scientist is reporting that engineers at the SINTEF research lab
in Trondheim, Norway have developed the Personal Active Radio/Audio
Terminal (PARAT) earpiece for the Norwegian military. The development
goal was to enable soldiers to converse in noisy environments, and they
appear to have succeeded.
The key development is a computer program that is able to recognize
particular sounds, such as the human voice. If the voice components can
be successfully identified, they can be transmitted while other sounds
are blocked. The resulting device functions much like an in-the-ear
hearing aid. It fits snugly in the ear in an attempt to block sound from
entering the ear except through the device. A microphone on the outside
of the device passes the incoming sound to an embedded computer. The
computer filters the sound to transmit only the human voice, and passes
it to a tiny loudspeaker on the inside of the device.
You may be hearing more about this development in the near future. A
company called NACRE has been spun off of SINTEF to commercialize the
technology.
Those wishing to read the full article should point their browsers to
www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns9999423
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
May 2006
As baby
boomers swing into their 60s, one in three can expect some hearing loss.
But thanks to technological advances, aging rockers won't have to fumble
with the clunky hearing aids their parents wore. Among the latest
developments:
Smaller,
sleeker, smarter hearing aids.
Going
wireless.
Hybrid
implants.
Assistive-listening devices.
Full Story
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
November 2006
The folks at ASHA have published a really good
primer on various types of assistive technology for people with hearing
loss. It also has sections that consider the special needs of children
and seniors, as well as a discussion of audiologic rehabilitation. You
can download it from: http://tinyurl.com/tdsfr
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
January
2007
In
a twist of fate, Sandy Mintz, an audiologist with medical device
designer Advanced Bionics, lost her hearing about 10 years ago. Now, she
is working with Samsung to help develop a wireless MP3 system so the
deaf can enjoy music. The idea is to link a Samsung MP3 player to the
cochlear implant developed and sold by Advanced Bionics, which is a
division of Boston Scientific. The cochlear implant consists of a
processor worn outside the ear. The processor converts audio streams
from the MP3 player (as well as ambient sounds and human speech) into
digital data. The data then goes to another chip, implanted in a
person's skull, which translates the data into electrical impulses. Full
Story
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
May 2007
After meningitis took Jorja Steele's hearing a week before her first birthday, her only hopes for a life with sound were cochlear implants, which can partially restore hearing to the deaf. But the inner ear damage was too severe and double implants failed to make a difference. Today, her last chance to hear or talk lies in the hands of neurosurgeons from three Melbourne hospitals. In a rare operation - carried out on less than 25 children in the world - the three-year-old will become the first child in Australia to receive an auditory brainstem implant.
Full Story
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
February 2008
By interpreting closed captioning data, Samsung's
technology can automatically pull up Web content relevant to a TV show
without a mouse or keyboard. Now that TV and the Internet are finally
getting all cozy thanks to HTPCs, Web-enabled TVs, and streaming media
boxes, Samsung is trying to help consumers take the next step in combining
the two, by using TV programming to help round up relevant Web content.
The company's See'N'Search technology automatically scans TV programming
for keywords and generates links that are accessible just by jumping to a
different menu with the remote - no keyboard and mouse required. The
system harvests its information from channel guide information and
closed-captioning metadata, then uses natural language technologies to
sift the relevant words from the irrelevant ones and determine what a
program is about. Consumers can pull up the automatically generated links
on their TVs without any input of their own, and there are even options
for zapping the data to other Wi-Fi connected devices rather than browsing
it on the big screen.
Full Story
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
March 2008
NAVARRA, Spain - A team of ear, nose, and throat (ENT)
specialists and neurosurgeons at the University Hospital of Navarra, led
by doctors Manuel Manrique Rodríguez, specialist in ENT surgery, and
Bartolomé Bejarano Herruzo, a specialist in paediatric neurosurgery, have
successfully operated on a 13-month-old girl from Murcia, who had been
born deaf due to the lack of auditory nerves. She is the youngest patient
in the world who has received an auditory implant in the brain stem. As a
result of the operation, the child has begun to hear and started language
development, according to reports. Previously, the medical center had
carried out, also successfully, a similar procedure on an 8-year-old girl.
Throughout the world there have only been 38 brain stem implants in
children under the age of 12. In this most recent case, the child was born
with a congenital illness characterized by the absence of the cochlear
(auditory) nerves, which have the task of transmitting to the brain the
sound stimuli received by the auditory passage from the exterior. It is
notable that the rate of this disorder in the overall population is very
low, estimated at 1 in every 100,000 newly born babies.
Full Story
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
March 2008
Cochlear implants have helped many people with
severe to profound hearing loss to hear sounds and recognize speech. But
in the past if the electronic hearing devices failed, there were no
options. Now, doctors at UNC Hospitals are using an alternative way to
help those patients. Seven years ago, Watson Hale, 65, of Morehead City
had bacterial meningitis. "But that took my hearing. My body temperature
got up so high it burned my hair cells and that's when I became deaf,"
Hale said. He'd hoped a cochlear implant would help him, but that
depended on whether the snail shaped cochlea could still function. "His
cochlea was not fine. He received a cochlear implant and it didn't work
for him because of that," said Dr. Craig Buchman, an otolaryngology
surgeon at UNC. Last summer, Buchman made Hale the first in a clinical
trial to try a different implant that bypasses the cochlea, going straight
to the hearing nucleus of the brain stem. During the procedure the
electrodes are placed directly on the nucleus to stimulate it, Buchman
said.
Full Story
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
June 2008
Jorden, son of Olympic gold medalist Vonetta
Flowers and Johnny Flowers, was born without auditory nerves and ear
canals. His twin brother, Jaden, was born healthy, despite the pair being
born at 30 weeks. "We didn't even know [Jorden] was alive after the
doctors came in," Johnny Flowers said. "They started talking about the
complications with premature births. They painted a really dark picture of
his future." But the 2-pound, 9-ounce Jorden pulled through. That was the
first sign of the determination that has become synonymous with the
youngster's character. Many other signs would follow, as Jorden became
what doctors say is the first American child to undergo an auditory
brainstem implant that allows him to hear. The family began researching
Jorden's condition and treatments for his disability. Vonetta Flowers said
they immediately started to learn sign language so they could teach Jorden
to communicate. "His first sign was 'milk,'" Vonetta said. "It was funny
because he'd do the sign in the middle of the night like he expected you
to be watching."
Full Story
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
June 2008
You've almost certainly heard of the cochlear
implant, a device that stimulates the auditory nerve at the cochlea and
has restored "hearing" to tens of thousands of people worldwide. You may
have also heard of the auditory brainstem implant (ABI), which is used for
people whose auditory nerves aren't intact, particularly for people whose
auditory nerves have been severed during tumor removal. But you probably
haven't heard of auditory midbrain implants, which are implanted in the
midbrain, which is farther up the neurological chain than the brainstem.
This implant is being investigated as an improvement for folks who would
otherwise get the ABI. And initial results look promising!
Full Story
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
June 2008
Researchers in Spain have proven that
metamaterials, materials defined by their unusual man-made cellular
structure, can be designed to produce an acoustic cloak-a cloak that can
make objects impervious to sound waves, literally diverting sound waves
around an object. The research, "Acoustic cloaking in two dimensions: a
feasible approach", published June 13, 2008, in the New Journal of Physics
(NJP), builds on recent theoretical research which has sought ways to
produce materials that can hide objects from sound, sight, and x-rays.
Daniel Torrent and José Sánchez-Dehesa from the Wave Phenomena Group,
Department of Electronics Engineering at the Polytechnic University of
Valencia, cite theoretical work published early last year in NJP by
researchers from Duke University in North Carolina as the starting point
for their more practical approach.
Full Story
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
July 2008
For Ellen Hibbard music has never really meant
very much. Deaf from birth, she would only be able to experience a tune by
placing her hands on a flat wooden surface near the stereo or radio, or
directly on the amplifier. But now that's all changed. And for the first
time she has an understanding of why people love music - be it rock and
roll, jazz or classical. Hibbard has tested an experimental "emoti-chair,"
which with the help of a computer translates music into a series of
tactile sensations, including rocking and vibrating. Think of it as a kind
of full-body vibrator triggered by the frequency of individual notes in a
musical composition or even random sounds.
Full Story
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
October 2008
Current
state-of-the-art technology for an artificial cochlea operates in a
similar fashion except that, unlike the tightly curled cochlea, the MEMS (microelectromechanical-system)-based
cochlea stretches out in a linear structure. The 3-cm-long device
comprises an acoustic input port at the narrow end of a tapered strip.
Where the strip is narrow, the sense material is stiff and vibrates in
response to high-frequency compression waves in the fluid that the strip
is immersed in. Additionally, as the strip widens, the material is more
compliant, vibrates more easily, and absorbs the energy of lower-frequency
waves
Full Story
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
March 2009
A chair that allows the hearing-impaired to
experience music in a new way will be featured at a concert in Toronto
designed for deaf people. The Emoti-Chair is a three-year venture
developed at Ryerson University's centre for learning technologies in
conjunction with the science of music, auditory research and technology
(SMART) lab. The idea is to treat the skin as a hearing membrane, said
Carmen Branje, one of the Ryerson researchers. Branje, 26, who has a
bachelor's degree in computing science and a master's in management
science, also plays drums in the Toronto punk rock band Hollywood Swank,
one of the groups that will be performing at the concert on Thursday.
Full Story
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
August 2009
The DeafBlind Communicator changes all that. It
features a laptop-sized device that has either a regular or Braille
keyboard. Beneath that keyboard is a second, smaller keyboard with Braille
keys. There is also a second, smaller device that resembles a personal
digital assistant, or PDA, in size and appearance. When a deaf-blind
person wishes to communicate with a non-signing person, he or she simply
hands over the smaller device and sends the following message, which is
both displayed on the text screen and electronically spoken through
speakers: "Hi, I am deaf-blind (I can't hear or see). To communicate with
me, type a message and press" the return arrow. The return message is
converted into Braille, which the deaf-blind person is able to read by
touch on the smaller set of keys on the keyboard device.
Full Story
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
October 2009
Capetonians with visual and hearing disabilities
could find navigating the city's roads somewhat safer in future, following
the city's announcement that it will equip all new road intersections with
vibrating audio-signal buttons to ensure safe crossing. Mayco member for
transport Elizabeth Thompson yesterday demonstrated the device at the
crossing outside the Cape Town Society for the Blind in Salt River. As
part of the public participation process around the Integrated Rapid
Transit plan, the city received several calls for these devices from
organisations representing disabled people.
Full Story
