The iPod Touch and the iPhone have an app for everything it seems. There’s apps for using Twitter, tracking stocks, playing games, creating new recipes and making sure you don’t burn them, learning French, the list goes on and on.

When is someone going to build a hearing aid app?

An app that turns an iPod into a fully-functioning hearing aid, it isn’t as far-fetched as it sounds. The iPhone already has everything it needs: a microphone, two outputs and the ability to run software for sound processing. The iPod has all that except the microphone but I’m sure someone could build a cheap add-on. Are there wireless headphone for the iPod? That’d be even better.

This setup would make for a cheap assistive listening device. It would also be a poweful one as it could run the high-end software that is in today’s cutting edge hearing aids. I could imagine a day where all of the big-name manufacturers have their hearing-aid software available on the app store for download so you could pick and choose for a couple of dollars for each hearing aid.

All those people blasting their eardrums with their iPods could have the solution to their impending hearing loss without having to buy extra hardware!

Hearing aids are expensive and when you’ve spent a lot of money on a pair you expect them to fix your hearing problems. After all, that’s what they are for, to correct your hearing loss.

I remember (it’s probably about five years ago now) visiting an audiologist because I was struggling to hear at work and wanted to replace my pair of aging hearing aids. I didn’t really have a lot of money to splash on new aids but I knew I needed to do something to hear better. After having my hearing tested we talked about a couple of different aids that could be suitable and I couldn’t decide whether to go for the pair at £1500 or for the more expensive ones and I said something like, “I just need to hear everything at work”, to which the response was, “You need to have a realistic expectation of how well you are going to hear with these aids – you’ve got a pretty severe hearing loss”. I was pretty annoyed with that: I have to pay you £1500+ and have realistic expectations? Sounded like a cop-out to me.

But the audiologist was 100% right.

Hearing aids do an excellent job of modifying sounds so that they are audible but they can’t repair a damaged ear. For us with hearing loss the clarity of sounds is just as big a problem as the volume of them – you might hear stuff but you don’t understand it. This is especially true with sensorineural hearing loss, which is the most common type of loss

It can be incredibly frustrating to spend money only to find that you still can’t hear some stuff that you want to. I am writing this because I get a lot of emails from people who are frustrated with their new aids and their audiologist and whilst it pains me to say it we really do have to have realistic expectations of what a hearing aid can do. Which is not to say that I think hearing aids are rubbish or anything like that – my hearing aids mean that I go from not being able to hear someone talking even if their mouth is right next to my ear to being able to hold conversations at short distances. They make a world of difference to me but there’s still stuff I can’t hear every day and that is frustrating.

A soldier has won £330,000 from the Ministry of Defence for hearing loss, after being told not to wear earplugs during a training exercise to make it more “battle realistic”. Charles Bradlaugh was left with hearing loss and tinnitus.

Mr Bradlaugh, 22, was a cadet when colleagues started firing before he could find earplugs or alert anyone at Barry Buddon Training Centre in Carnoustie, Angus, in 2004.

He was given a discharge from the army on health grounds in 2007. Mr Bradlaugh, of Sunderland, had sued the MoD for breach of statutory duty saying his condition left him “disadvantaged in the labour market”. The MoD admitted liability.

At Newcastle county court yesterday he was compensated for loss of earnings and damages. Judge Christopher Walton said: “I’m satisfied it was his intention to continue in this career for 22 years.”

Story originally seen on The Deaf Blog.

The Starkey S Series hearing aids have a feature called T2. This basically enables you to control the hearing aid with a touch-tone mobile phone.

Once your audiologist has switched your aids to use the T2 feature it is easy to use your mobile to change volume and programme settings – you just need to hold the phone a few inches from your ear, press the * button twice and then use the keypad to increase/decrease volume or change programme.

I really like this for two reasons:

• It means you don’t have to have a volume control or programme selector button on your aid’s shell. This is particularly useful if you are going for the ITE, ITC or CIC models as they have less surface space showing to house the buttons.
• It’s more discreet. You don’t have to stick your finger in your ear and waggle it around whenever you need more volume or a different programme.

It is much harder to fit hearing aids to someone who has a severe hearing loss than to someone who has only a minor loss.

Seems logical, right?

Turns out that a lot of the time it isn’t like that, it’s just as hard, or even harder, to fit a hearing aid to someone who has lost only a small amount of hearing as it is to someone who can hardly hear a thing. The reason is that the person with the minor loss is chasing after the perfect hearing they had a few years ago, or at least what they remember as perfect – whereas the person with a severe loss probably just wants a comfortable sound and to be able to hear people talking.

Why would it be hard to set up a hearing aid for a minor loss so that someone can get back their glory days and hear exactly as they want? They’ve had their hearing test, the audiogram has been created and the aids have been programmed to it. Bingo, perfect sounds are here again.

Or not!

Hearing is very subjective, two people with exactly the same hearing loss, exactly the same hearing test results and exactly the same audiogram will probably not want their hearing aids set up in the same way. The dispenser can set the hearing aids to fit the hearing loss, but only the person listening with them knows how something should sound.

Marlee Matlin had an idea for a reality show that she hoped would bring some insight into the lives and struggles of deaf people and how they cope. But while reality TV has brought us wife swappers, party girls, aging rock stars and dieting divas, apparently no one was ready for something that real.

So instead, the hearing-impaired actress who won an Academy Award as lead actress for her role in “Children of a Lesser God,” took her show “My Deaf Family” to Google’s YouTube. You can watch it here.

“Deaf and hard of hearing people make up one of the largest minority groups,” she said in an interview through her interpreter, Jack Jason, “and yet there has never been a show, a reality documentary series that features what life is like for them.” Matlin financed the show, which tells the story of a family in Fremont, California. All the family members are deaf, except for the oldest son, Jared, and the youngest, Elijah. It is narrated by Jared.

Matlin shopped her pilot to network executives, who purported to “love it.” But none would take the plunge.
“They didn’t quite know if they could pull it off, or even how,” Matlin said.

Read the full article on The Deaf Blog.

“Mirror mirror on the wall, who speaks the clearest of us all?”

Mirroring is a behaviour in which one person copies another. It usually happens when two people are talking to each other or are in close proximity. Common mirror behaviour is things like copying someone’s body language or movements, saying the same words or expressions or looking in the same direction. It’s usually a sign that there is some kind of friendship or respect between the person being mirrored and the copier. You can read more about mirroring here.

I’ve noticed that I can sometimes use mirroring to make people talk a bit louder or a bit clearer. It really does work! If someone is mumbling or talking into their hand, looking the other way when talking or doing something that is making it difficult to hear I can sometimes make them stop it by raising my own voice, looking straight at them and talking as clearly as possible.

The opposite is true as well. If I am quiet, reserved and mumbling then often the person I am speaking with will do that too.

Mirroring won’t always work but once you learn about it it is very surprising how often you notice yourself being mirrored and also how often you find yourself doing it to someone else. Try and use it to your advantage – could be useful if you don’t really feel like asking the other person to speak up.

Related posts:

1. Sometimes a cupped-hand can work wonders

Even though digital hearing aids do a remarkable job of helping us to hear better it is sometimes good to go back to basics.

A cupped-hand behind the ear can work wonders. If you are like me then you’ll sometimes put your hand behind your ear if you didn’t hear someone as an indication that you need them to repeat themselves, it’s a visual clue for the speaker but it actually does make a real difference to what you can hear. Try it next time you are watching the TV or are somewhere we you can’t quite hear or understand some speech, cup your ear and push it out a bit, I’m surprised how much more sound my ear captures when I do that.

Our ears are shaped to capture sounds, we can give them a helping hand when we need to.

Related posts:

1. Using psychology and body language to hear more

You could hear more by taking your hearing aids out.

How does that work? Well, I was in a meeting yesterday, sat around a table with seven other people – after a while I realised that I wasn’t hearing several of them as well as I normally would be. I did a quick check that the volume settings on my aids were correct – they were. I didn’t have a cold. I couldn’t think of any reason why I couldn’t hear them.

Until after the meeting, that is.

While at lunch, I took my hearing aids out and noticed that I had really sweaty ears (I have ITC aids and suffer from the occlusion effect). I left the aids out for five to ten minutes to let my ears dry out – popped them back and my hearing magically returned to normal. My sweaty ears had reduced my hearing slightly – not by much, but enough to stop me hearing those people in the meeting.

Here’s some of the blogs that I like to read. If you enjoy this site then you’ll definitely love these:

Speak Up Librarian

“I’m a hard of hearing librarian attempting to find my way in the world as a late deafened adult. I became aware of my hearing loss at the age of 40. These stories describe what it’s like for me to come to terms with my hearing loss and adjust to life with hearing aids. I hope you can laugh with me at some of the mistakes I’ve made. Perhaps you may also learn something helpful from my postings about resources for the hard of hearing.”

A Deaf Mum Shared Her World

“I’m a deaf mom of three deaf and hard of hearing kiddos.  The hubby is deaf too.  However, we’ve got a cute little Westie who can hear a rabbit breathing a half mile away.”

Hearing Sparks

“When I was four years old I was diagnosed with a bilateral sensorineural hearing loss. At the time it was mild to moderate, and over time it has increased to severe to profound. My left ear is my good ear – my right ear hears barely anything.”

I look so I can hear

“This blog is about living with a hearing loss in London (UK), aiming to raise awareness of various issues surrounding hearing loss. I’m profoundly deaf with speech so good that I fool most people into thinking I’m hearing.”

Liz’s deaf blog

“I hope by writing my blog that I help others who may be deaf like me, or hard of hearing, to know that your not alone in feelings or issues you may have about your deafness, and also that hearing people who may visit my blog, and take time to read it, come away a bit more deaf aware, with what problems or issues I may come across.”

Say What Club

“The SayWhatClub is an Internet-based support group, geared toward people in varying stages of hearing loss. We have been organized and incorporated since the mid 1990′s and serve a worldwide membership. The SayWhatClub has been a proven lifeline to those struggling with hearing loss in order to function in a hearing world to learn coping skills, job skills and acceptance. Here we find a whole family of people ‘just like us’ who share the feelings of isolations, the heartaches and, strangely, the joys of living with hearing loss.”

Hearing Mojo

“After my own hearing loss, I created Hearing Mojo for hard-of-hearing people and the industry that serves them to share information, stories, news of products and technology and discussion about hearing-loss issues and advocacy for change. My name is David Copithorne, and I live in the Boston area. Since 2002, when I suffered a sudden and severe hearing impairment, I’ve spent hundreds of hours and thousands of dollars discovering ways to cope with the situation. I have gathered a tremendous amount of valuable information. I decided a blog would be the perfect vehicle for sharing what I’ve learned and for others to post their experiences and advice.”

Eh? What? Huh?

“My name is (e. I write and manage this blog. My blog is mainly about deaf and hard of hearing issues.

I have a bilateral sensorinueral hearing loss (from birth, 1980). I am profoundly deaf in my left ear and mild-moderately deaf in my right ear (severe-profound loss in the high tones, mild loss in the lower tones).”

The Deaf Blog

“This blog’s main focus is on cochlear and baha implants and the impact they have in helping both young and old to hear. We also cover topics that we hope will be of interest to all deaf people and the community as a whole.”

Grumpy Old Deafies

“Deaf musings, usually written from the UK”

Hearing Exchange

“I’m Paula Rosenthal and I publish the HearingExchange website and blog to help adults and families dealing with hearing loss. I started HearingExchange in 2000 while my daughter was attending the Moog Center for Deaf Education to catch up with her speech and language skills.”

Hearing Tracker

Hearing Tracker gathers feedback from consumers — about their hearing aids and hearing care providers — but also publishes “Hearing News”, a blog that covers product news and provides helpful advice for consumers with hearing loss.

What other great HoH and deaf blogs am I missing out on? What do you read?