I’ve been messing around with JavaScript during lunchtimes at work this week and have started to put together a web application to allow people to add Closed Captions to videos. Currently it can add text to your own videos (mp4, flv, etc) as well as videos from Youtube. I have a few ideas of how the thing could work in terms of workflow including:

• Playing/pausing the video to be able to write the transcript.
• Breaking the transcript into each caption.
• Selecting the points in the video at which each caption should appear.
• Saving the created captions in WebVTT or SRT formats.
• Using the created caption file to display captions to viewers on your blog/website.

It’s an interesting little project for me but I’m not really sure whether this is worth pursuing? Is there good captioning services available online for free already? What works well? What doesn’t work well? Does anyone have any comments or suggestions to throw in? Would you like to see a captioning service added to Hearing Aid Know? Are you frustrated with current captioning options?

Also, questions for any US-based readers: Do you differentiate between the terms captions and subtitles? Here in the UK they mean the same thing but I’m not sure that’s the case everywhere?

The music industry has changed radically in the last 10 years: digital downloads, the iPod, Internet shopping and online piracy changed the ball-game entirely. Very few people buy music today in the same way as they did 10 years ago – many companies moved with the times and changed their business models to meet the iPod generation, and many have not and are struggling to compete.

The publishing industry is in upheaval too, more and more people are reading eBooks and everyone and their dog is shopping at Amazon. Borders went bust, most bricks and mortar book shops are in peril. Same as with music, some companies saw the change and went with the tide, other are trying to fight it and are losing. You can’t stop progress.

The music industry ship of change has sailed, the publishing industry is in the awkward teenager getting spots and don’t girls look nice stage, the hearing industry has just started feeling the winds of change.

Some in the hearing industry are embracing the changes and others are  digging in their heels. Change is inevitable, technology will progress, people will buy online, people will fit their own aids, new business models will prevail. The smart move is to learn from the record and publishing companies and join the party before it is too late.

I’m still undecided about how well online hearing aid sales can work right now for two reasons: 1. My hearing is way too bad to be fitted with models being sold online so I can’t try them and 2. I have always needed plenty of re-programming by an audiologist/dispenser to get my aids just right, the audiogram was just a starting point. Having said that, I’ve asked readers who have bought online and their feedback is entirely positive, they are all happy with their online purchases and didn’t need extensive reprogramming from a professional – my own experience is completely the opposite to what everyone else has said and maybe this is showing that we are all different, hearing is subjective and options are a good thing.

An example of a new way of supplying hearing aids is the hi HealthInnovations website, it seems like a step in the right direction to me: you can buy a hearing aid online if your hearing loss fits what they are selling, or if not you get directed to a dispenser for one-on-one fitting and advice. How can that not be a good thing? You can’t stop progress.

You can argue until you are blue in the face that people must see a dispenser for a full assessment, you can try legal action against online sellers, you can say the old way is best, you can say it’s unfair, but you can’t stop progress.

Lincoln Pharmaceuticals announced that it has introduced the first injection pharmaceutical cure for tinnitus in India. Using the brand name Tinnex, the injection utilizes the Caroverine molecule, which was developed by Lincoln Pharma under a licensing arrangement and technical collaboration with Phafag AG, Switzerland.

According to the company, cochlear synaptic tinnitus is the most common cause of tinnitus and is due to disturbed interplay of receptors on the postsynaptic membrane between inner hair cells and dendrites. Disturbed interplay creates a state of spontaneous depolarization, causing patients to continuously hear a sound.

Tinnex is described as a glutamate antagonist with a single injection that corrects the spontaneous depolarization state. Receptors start functioning again in a normal physiological way, giving permanent cure from tinnitus to patients, the company claims. It also says that no adverse effects have been noticed during its clinical studies of the drug.

Lincoln Pharmaceuticals says it is exploring other countries to introduce Tinnex. More information is available on the company’s website.

Source: Hearing Review and Tinnex.

A deaf football player was sent off after celebrating an offside goal because he couldn’t hear the whistle.

Philip John Dolan, who plays for the Great Britain and Scotland deaf football teams, was playing for Kilsyth against Armadale in a replay of a Scottish Junior Cup tie when the referee ruled him offside.

Unable to hear the whistle, the 24-year-old, who is known as PJ, kept playing and was given a yellow card for ignoring the signal.

PJ only noticed he had been booked after he had put the ball past the goalie and turned round to ­celebrate.

You can read the complete article on dailyrecord.co.uk.

Providing clues to deafness, researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have identified a gene that is required for proper development of the mouse inner ear.

In humans, this gene, known as FGF20, is located in a portion of the genome that has been associated with inherited deafness in otherwise healthy families.

“When we inactivated FGF20 in mice, we saw they were alive and healthy,” says senior author David M. Ornitz, MD, PhD, the Alumni Endowed Professor of Developmental Biology. “But then we figured out that they had absolutely no ability to hear.”

The results, published online Jan. 3 in PLoS Biology, show that disabling the gene causes a loss of outer hair cells, a special type of sensory cell in the inner ear responsible for amplifying sound. While about two-thirds of the outer hair cells were missing in mice without FGF20, the number of inner hair cells, the cells responsible for transmitting the amplified signals to the brain, appeared normal.

“This is the first evidence that inner and outer hair cells develop independently of one another,” says first author Sung-Ho Huh, PhD, postdoctoral research associate. “This is important because most age-related and noise-induced hearing loss is due to the loss of outer hair cells.”

As such, Ornitz and Huh speculate that FGF20 signaling will be a required step toward the goal of regenerating outer hair cells in mammals, the only vertebrates incapable of such feats of hearing restoration.

You can read the original article in full here.

A live demonstration of Sony’s new subtitle glasses took place in London this week, with positive reports from attendees. Tom Fiddian from Action on Hearing Loss – formerly the Royal National Institute for Deaf People – attended the event and reported via Twitter (@tomfiddian and hash tag #Subtitleglasses).The first slide presented was of actor Tom Hanks wearing a prototype of the glasses at the Consumer Electronics Show in 2009. This first generation of glasses was for text only in cinemas. The next generation of glasses can display images and send audio, and Fiddian suggests has the possibilities of being used as user interfaces for mobile phones.

It was this generation that was trialled in the USA and received positive feedback from the deaf community. One comment was that they were “better than a hearing aid.”

The subtitle glasses are wirelessly connected and can transmit over seven channels with each channel running up to 6 different languages. At only 79g and with a 6-hour battery life, the glasses offer a lightweight, long-lasting alternative for viewing captioned movies. View a photo of the glasses and some basic specifications.

As the text ‘hovers’ in front of the viewer, there are three distance settings as well as two text size settings. There are also five levels of brightness which adjust automatically to the conditions.

The receiver, which is wired to the glasses can transmit either captions to the glasses or audio to headphones, but it can’t do both. For patrons that already wear glasses, the subtitle glasses are designed to sit over your own glasses. A 3D clip-on solution is also being developed.

Read the full article at yourlocalcinema.com.au.

The National Deaf Children’s Society (NDCS) is campaigning to get the UK government to provide better access to sign language courses for hearing parents of deaf children.

Nine out of ten deaf children are born to hearing families who have little to no experience of deafness. Communicating with your child is a basic right, but many families are not getting the support they need to learn British Sign Language. Sign language courses vary throughout the UK in regards to availability and price. It is unacceptable that parents of deaf children who wish to learn sign language are not getting the help they need to communicate with their child.

A survey run by NDCS in mid-2011 and found that 56% of local councils did not provide any services or support for parents of deaf children wanting to learn sign language, and those that did often required parents to pay for the course – which can cost up to £600.

A sign language course, developed by NDCS, was trialled in two regions in the UK in July 2011 and 83% of the 123 families who took part reported that they felt confident communicating with their deaf child, compared to 37% prior to the course. The hope is that the government can be persuaded to provide this course to families across the whole of the UK.

Want to help? If you would like to see UK-wide support for families of deaf kids then please sign the online petition.

Neurotone have just released a web-based version of their LACE training software, which is excellent news for anyone who wants to better understand speech in noise.

LACE (Listening And Communication Enhancement) is essentially a training program for listening, it teaches you to listen better. I did an interview with Dr Daniel Taft from Blamey Saunders Hearing about how they use LACEa while back. I think the release of the web-based version will make it easier for people to try LACE and get the benefit from it – it’s compatible with iPad and other mobile devices so you can train wherever you are. And being a bit of a nerd myself, it’s good to see them using HTML5 rather than Flash.

I’ve got a sign-up code for the online version and will be trying it out ASAP. I’ll let you know how the new version works on PC, iPod and iPad – and how much my listening ability improves.

Check it out for yourself on the Neurotone site.

I took our car into a garage for repair today. After dropping the keys off at the service desk I went and sat in their waiting room – it wasn’t really a room as such, just a ring of chairs in the corner of a large open-plan showroom. There were three of us sat in there. After about 15 minutes or so of waiting, the garage receptionist appeared at the opposite end of the waiting area to me and asked if anyone would like tea of coffee. I heard her every word. The other two waiting for their cars said they didn’t and the receptionist then looked over at me – it went like this:

me: I’d love a coffee, please.

her: Milk or sugar?

me: Just milk, thanks.

her: OK, won’t be a minute.

Nothing special there, except for one small thing: I heard every single word she said. I didn’t have to fill in the gaps that I didn’t hear. I didn’t have to pretend I’d heard. I’m hoping that I came across as a normal, sane human being during this conversation because even though I was sitting relaxed in my chair I was DOING CARTWHEELS OF PURE JOY inside! It’s rare that a conversation is that easy, at that distance too, in an open-plan room. While I was responding calmly with, “just milk, please” my brain was all HELL YEAH! and was doing imaginary fist pumps and high fives.

I’m finally getting settled in with my new AudioSync iSyncs and am reaping the benefits from them. To the people emailing me for an iSync review: Sorry, I’ve been lazy, but it’s coming!

Apple’s new iPhone 4 is just hitting the shelves here in the UK. One of its big selling points is its live video chat – you can see the person calling as well as hearing them. Apple have a new advert out showcasing this and amazingly it features two people using the phone to communicate using ASL and, not only that, it also pans around to the back of the guy’s head to show his hearing aid. Here it is:

I’m well impressed. Not only is this phone an incredibly useful gadget for those whose who sign, Apple have realised that they have a potentially massive deaf/hoh userbase and they aren’t scared to market to them. They’re sticking a communication product for the hearing impaired that is normally marketed in niche magazines and websites and putting it on prime-time TV. I feel like we’ve turned a corner.

We can also add this to the growing understanding and exposure in the media of hearing loss and the needs of the people that suffer from it. This may go some way to helping hearing aids be a bit cooler and less of an old people’s thing.

I guess this post sounds a bit like an Apple love-in but I was just plain shocked when I saw the advert for the first time. Feels like a big thing to me.

Is the guy signing in the advert Matt Damon? Sure looks like him.