“Can you hear me now?”: Insurance Coverage for Hearing Benefits in the United States

Public and private insurance coverage for hearing benefits underscores the gaps in coverage for treating hearing loss in the U.S. The commodification of the hearing benefits sector of healthcare in this country has detrimental consequences for personal health. Using three personal anecdotes to frame the issue, my paper explores the complex worlds of both public and private insurance as well as the implications of each type of insurance for both adults and children. Current regulations and laws for hearing benefits leave many people to suffer financially, physically, and emotionally. After reviewing the current regulations I propose changes to rectify some of the problems within this sector of health care

The Ambient Horn: Designing a novel audio-based learning experience

The Ambient Horn is a novel handheld device designed to support children learning about habitat distributions and interdependencies in an outdoor woodland environment. The horn was designed to emit non-speech audio sounds representing ecological processes. Both symbolic and arbitrary mappings were used to represent the processes. The sounds are triggered in response to the children’s location in certain parts of the woodland. A main objective was to provoke children into interpreting and reflecting upon the significance of the sounds in the context in which they occur. Our study of the horn being used showed the sounds to be provocative, generating much discussion about what they signified in relation to what the children saw in the woodland. In addition, the children appropriated the horn in creative ways, trying to ‘scoop’ up new sounds as they walked in different parts of the woodland

Multi-cursor multi-user mobile interaction with a large shared display

When using a mobile device to control a cursor on a large shared display, the interaction must be carefully planned to match the environment and purpose of the systems use. We describe a ‘democratic jukebox’ system that revealed five recommendations that should be considered when designing this type of interaction relating to providing feedback to the user; how to represent users in a multi-cursor based system; where people tend to look and their expectation of how to move their cursor; the orientation of screens and the social context; and, the use of simulated users to give the real users a sense that they are engaging with a greater audience

Patient satisfaction after auditory implant surgery. ten-year experience from a single implanting unit center

Conclusions: The satisfaction rate of the subjects with an auditory implant appears strictly related to the resulting auditory improvement, and the surgical variables would play a prevailing role in respect to the esthetic factors. Objectives: To assess the rate of satisfaction in subjects who underwent the surgical application of an auditory device at a single Implanting Center Unit. Method: A series of validated questionnaires has been administered to subjects who underwent the surgical application of different auditory devices. The Glasgow Benefit Inventory (GBI), the Visual Analog Scale (VAS), and the Abbreviated Profile of Hearing Aid Benefit (APHAB) have been used to compare the implanted situation with the hearing-aided one; a percutaneous bone conductive implant (pBCI) with an active middle ear implant (AMEI) on the round window in mixed hearing loss; and an invisible, fully-implantable device with a frankly and bulky semi-implantable device. Results: The mean GBI scores were higher in Vibrant Soundbridge (VSB)VR and BonebridgeVR subjects, without significant differences among the various devices. The mean VAS score increased for all the devices in comparison with the conventional hearing aid. The mean APHAB score was similarly better in the implanted condition as total and partial scores

Using Sound to Enhance Users’ Experiences of Mobile Applications

The latest smartphones with GPS, electronic compass, directional audio, touch screens etc. hold potentials for location based services that are easier to use compared to traditional tools. Rather than interpreting maps, users may focus on their activities and the environment around them. Interfaces may be designed that let users search for information by simply pointing in a direction. Database queries can be created from GPS location and compass direction data. Users can get guidance to locations through pointing gestures, spatial sound and simple graphics. This article describes two studies testing prototypic applications with multimodal user interfaces built on spatial audio, graphics and text. Tests show that users appreciated the applications for their ease of use, for being fun and effective to use and for allowing users to interact directly with the environment rather than with abstractions of the same. The multimodal user interfaces contributed significantly to the overall user experience

Screening methods for age-related hearing loss in older patients with cancer: A review of the literature

© 2018 by the authors. As people grow older, they may experience loss in hearing sensitivity. Age-related hearing loss may negatively affect the patient's quality of life as it may lead to social isolation. In older patients with cancer, hearing loss can seriously interfere with the patient's ability to deal properly with all aspects of their disease, and may have a cumulative effect on their already decreased quality of life. Therefore, the proper screening of those conditions is essential in order to optimise the patient's comfort during and after treatment. This review article aims at providing a concise image of the nature of age-related hearing loss, and provides an overview of the screening methods that could be used in older patients with cancer

Bone conductive implants in single sided deafness

Conclusion: The Bone Conductive Implants (BCI) showed to partly restore some of the functions lost when the binaural hearing is missing, such as in the single-sided deafness (SSD) subjects. The adoption of the single BCI needs to be advised by the clinician on the ground of a thorough counselling with the SSD subject. Objectives: To perform an overview of the present possibilities of BCI in SSD and to evaluate the reliability of the audiological evaluation for assessing the speech recognition in noise and the sound localization cues, as major problems related to the loss of binaural hearing. Method: Nine SSD subjects who underwent BCI implantation underwent a pre-operative audiological evaluation, consisting in the soundfield speech audiometry, as word recognition score (WRS) and sound localization, in quiet and in noise. Moreover, they were also tested for the accuracy of directional word recognition in noise and with the subjective evaluation with APHAB questionnaire. Results: The mean maximum percentage of word discrimination was 65.5% in the unaided condition and 78.9% in the BCI condition. The sound localization in noise with the BCI was better than the unaided condition, especially when stimulus and noise were on the same side of the implanted ear. The accuracy of directional word recognition showed to improve with BCI in respect to the unaided condition, in the BCI side, with either the stimulus on the implanted ear and the noise in the contralateral ear, or when both stimulus and noise were deliver to implanted ear

In the dark – designing navigation for a haptic theatre experience

We describe the ongoing work of a collaborative theatre project, in which blind and sighted members of an interdisciplinary team are working on the creation of an immersive and accessible theatre experience. The theatre experience is set in pitch dark, and uses audio and haptic ubiquitous technologies to guide both blind and sighted members of the audience. During two sessions which explored the use of enactive navigation in the dark space, participants were able to locate areas of interest within the dark, using enactive explorative navigation, and some participants described this as a ‘dense’ experience

Efficacy in noise of the Starkey Surflink Mobile 2 technology in directional versus omnidirectional microphone mode with experienced adult hearing aid users

The Starkey SurfLink Mobile 2 is a remote microphone accessory. Starkey claims that by placing the SurfLink’s internal microphone in the directional microphone setting, the participant will hear better in noise over the omnidirectional setting. This study aims to test the thisthe claim about the devic

Feeling what you hear: tactile feedback for navigation of audio graphs

Access to digitally stored numerical data is currently very limited for sight impaired people. Graphs and visualizations are often used to analyze relationships between numerical data, but the current methods of accessing them are highly visually mediated. Representing data using audio feedback is a common method of making data more accessible, but methods of navigating and accessing the data are often serial in nature and laborious. Tactile or haptic displays could be used to provide additional feedback to support a point-and-click type interaction for the visually impaired. A requirements capture conducted with sight impaired computer users produced a review of current accessibility technologies, and guidelines were extracted for using tactile feedback to aid navigation. The results of a qualitative evaluation with a prototype interface are also presented. Providing an absolute position input device and tactile feedback allowed the users to explore the graph using tactile and proprioceptive cues in a manner analogous to point-and-click techniques