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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

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Smart Earpiece Screens Unwanted Sounds

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

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New Help For Hearing Loss

 

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

 

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Hearing Assistive Technology and Audiologic Rehabilitation

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

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An MP3 player for the deaf

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  

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First Australian Child Gets ABI

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

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Samsung Product Searches TV Content Using Caption Data

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

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Youngest Patient Receives Auditory Brainstem Implant (ABI)

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

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UNC Performs Auditory Brainstem Implant

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

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Auditory Brainstem Implant Allows Child to Communicate

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

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Implants moving up the neurological chain

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

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Nuisance Noise Silenced by an Acoustic Cloak

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

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Musical frequencies turned into tactile sensations for deaf

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

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Artificial cochlea: an example of structural processing

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

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Canadian device allows deaf to 'hear' music through skin

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

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Device Allows Deaf Blind Folks to Communicate with Hearing Folks

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

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Device Helps Deaf and Blind Cross Streets Safely

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