New Apps From Google To Help Deaf And Hard Of Hearing
An article Cnet.com about two new apps that benefit people who are hard of hearing got me thinking about how Charlotte will integrate new technology throughout her lifetime. On of the apps was Life Transcribe. It is an app that uses a phone’s microphone to automatically transcribe real-world speech into captions in real-time and is available in over 70 languages and dialects. It immediately gets me thinking about possible use in a classroom setting, if she is close enough to the teacher and can capture the day’s lesson to review at home.
Deaf and Hard of Hearing kids can take longer to to process sound and have to work extra hard to listen, much less digest the new information they are hearing. They also have to work really hard to build their auditory memory. (Ability to remember what we hear.)
Auditory memory is something that hearing people take for granted. It is a skill we have been working on in Auditory Verbal Therapy since Charlotte was about 3. Reading her a four step story. Then asking her to organize pictures in the order of what happened. Sounds simple and maybe like what any other 3-year-old is doing?
Sorta, but Charlotte has had to work harder to learn to do it and understand what is expected. It’s easy to remember the last thing you hear, but to remember the proper order of what happened from beginning to end - that gets harder. Like when you were taught how to do it for reading comprehension as a young kid.
That’s the best way I can explain it… You had to learn to read. Then learn to remember what you read. Well, deaf and hard or hearing kids have to learn to listen. Then learn to remember what they hear.
The second app the article talks about feels less significant for deaf/HH kids, but what it does is remind me of the high functionality her cochlear implant and hearing aid will have for her in the future when she’s able to manage the settings herself.
Sound Amplifier is an app that uses a phone and set of headphones to filter, augment and amplify sounds so that users can better hear conversations or announcements in noisy environments.
“With both Live Transcribe and Sound Amplifier, our goal is to help the hundreds of millions of people who are deaf or hard of hearing communicate more clearly.”
While the pediatric audiologist will set your child’s hearing aid and cochlear to specific settings and lock it, it’s my understanding that when they are older, they will be able to manage how they digest sound based on their environment and customize their hearing inputs by situation. So cool!
I honestly hadn’t been paying too much tech technology and smartphones tech as it concerned hearing loss, as I find Charlotte does best when she has less screen time (fewer break downs, better listening and happier all around!). Left to her own device, she’d binge unwrapping videos for hours, then melt down into a puddle. That said, below is her unwrapping a giant “surprise egg for her 3rd birthday from her godmother. She was talking so much, I had to do it!
Not: We are an Apple family and these are Android apps. With my husband and I both in advertising, we are Apple brand loyalists - so time to research what Apple is doing for the deaf and hard of hearing.
Cheers and may we keep getting thoughtful humans working together to create new solutions for all sorts of people dealing with all levels of hearing loss. According to World Health Organization, 466 million people live with hearing loss across the globe. There are lots of people needing services and innovation to better their lives…. What will we think of next!