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.

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

“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

What is a digital hearing aid? What does it do and how does it work?What is a digital hearing aid?

What is a digital hearing aid?

Very simply put: a hearing aid is a device used to help hard of hearing people to hear sounds better. A digital hearing aid achieves this by receiving sounds through a number of microphones, processing the sound and outputting it into your ear. The processing of the sound is performed by what is essentially a mini computer inside the hearing aid – this is where the digital part of the name comes from.

The aim of the hearing aid is to help you hear some things better – people’s voices and music are things you want to hear, traffic noise and other loud background noises are not so welcome. When a digital hearing aid processes the sound, it doesn’t simply amplify everything – it makes intelligent decisions about whether the sound is something you will want to hear or not. By doing this, it can increase your chances of being able to, for example, hear someone talking whilst standing next to a noisy road.

Common features

There are many digital hearing aids on the market these days. The technology is being pushed all the time and companies such as and others are Oticon, Starkey, Siemens innovating all the time. Below is a list of common features of digital aids:

Noise reduction

Noise is unwanted sound. As mentioned above, noise reduction is extremely beneficial in hearing aids to enable the wearer to more easily hear the sound they are interested in. Digital Noise Reduction (DNR) technology in hearing aids can often cause a problem when listening to music – the aid will identify the music as noise and attempt to drown it out. For this reason, many aids come with a separate programme (see below) specifically for music.

Feedback reduction

Similar to noise reduction. Aids will provide dedicated processing to avoid feedback noise.

Programmes

Hearing aids are worn in many different environments and situations. For this reason, most digital aids have a number of programmes. A programme is a set of instructions for the hearing aid, it tells it how much noise or feedback reduction to apply, what the volume setting should be and so on. The wearer is able to switch between programmes using a button on the shell or on a remote control.

Directional microphones

Some aids have more than one microphone. This not only helps to get a better range of hearing, it can also be used to improve noise reduction. If you are listening to someone directly in front of you, it is possible to turn off the backward-facing microphone to eliminate noise from behind – some aids may do this automatically, some may allow the wearer to switch too.

Rechargeable batteries

A money saver and definitely something to consider when thinking about buying a new aid. The price of throw-away batteries soon mounts up.

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?

Google have announced that they are rolling out captions to all videos on Youtube. A little while back they announced a test of captioning for a small number of videos. I guess they’ve ironed out any problems seen during the trial run and they’re now ready to offer across the board. From Google themselves on March 4th 2010:

Today, we are opening up auto-captions to all YouTube users. There will even be a “request processing” button for un-captioned videos that any video owner can click on if they want to speed up the availability of auto-captions. It will take some time to process all the available video, so here are some things to keep in mind:

• While we plan to broaden the feature to include more languages in the months to come, currently, auto-captioning is only for videos where English is spoken.
• Just like any speech recognition application, auto-captions require a clearly spoken audio track. Videos with background noise or a muffled voice can’t be auto-captioned. President Obama’s speech on the recent Chilean Earthquake is a good example of the kind of audio that works for auto-captions.
• Auto-captions aren’t perfect and just like any other transcription, the owner of the video needs to check to make sure they’re accurate. In other cases, the audio file may not be good enough to generate auto-captions. But please be patient — our speech recognition technology gets better every day.
• Auto-captions should be available to everyone who’s interested in using them. We’re also working to provide auto-captions for all past user uploads that fit the above mentioned requirements. If you’re having trouble enabling them for your video, please visit our Help Center: this article is for uploaders and this article is for viewers.

For content owners, the power of auto-captioning is significant. With just a few quick clicks your videos can be accessed by a whole new global audience. And captions can make is easier for users to discover content on YouTube.

Twenty hours of video is uploaded to YouTube every minute. Making some of these videos more accessible to people who have hearing disabilities or who speak different languages, not only represents a significant advancement in the democratization of information, it can also help foster greater collaboration and understanding.

I remember being so conscious of my hearing aids when I first started wearing them. It felt like they were HUGE! It felt like there was a big flashing neon arrow above my head pointing right at my ears and a sign up reading, “Hey, check this guy out, look at his ears!”.

I still do find myself wondering from time to time if people have spotted them and what they are thinking about them. Last happened a few weeks ago when I was on a bus and there was two people sat right behind me.

Thing is though, most people just don’t care about you or your hearing aids, they are too busy wrapped up in their own stuff and worrying about their own problems. There’s no neon sign.

The competition to win a year’s supply of hearing aid batteries ends today. You’ve got until midnight (UK time) to get your entry in and give yourself a chance to win a bunch of Rayovacs.https://hearingaidknow.wordpress.com/2010/02/01/win-a-years-supply-of-hearing-aid-batteries/

Good luck – you’ve got to be in it to win it!

The following is a guest post from Samantha Harvey of Sarabec Hearing Products – the personal listening device specialists.

Listening to the television and radio, using a telephone, or even answering the doorbell are things some people take for granted, but if you are hard of hearing these things are a real struggle. Assistive Listening Devices (ALD) can help. Here, we will look at how to choose the best device for your needs.

Hearing Aids

Many people who are hard of hearing often wear hearing aids to help listen in their everyday life. But these might not always work very well, especially if you are driving or are in a noisy restaurant. Hearing aids, unfortunately, are not 100% perfect and may you need an additional device such as an Assistive Listening Device to help hear clearly. Using the two together will be a significant improvement.

Benefits of Assistive Listening Devices

Assisted Listening Devices have several benefits for those who are hard of hearing:

• Lots of devices to choose from. From phone amplifiers to TV listeners, there are devices to improve your everyday life. You can even get baby monitors and smoke alarms.
• ALDs bring distant sounds to your ears, so it almost appears that someone is talking into both of yours at the same time, making sound that much clearer.
• ALDs cut out background noise. Microphones are much closer to the speaker’s mouth than other devices, so you only pick up the sounds going into the microphone, not anything else. Meetings, restaurants and parties become much more enjoyable with an ALD.
• Many ALDs are portable. You can take a personal amplifier wherever you go, even on holiday.

Downsides

There are some downsides to ALDs which users need to be aware of:

• Some ALDs can be expensive.
• Battery powered devices may need frequent battery changes.
• You may still need to use a hearing aid with them.

Types of ALDs available

There are several kinds of ALDs available to buy. They use several types of technology to help you listen. No technology is completely perfect and you may find some types work better than others. Choose one suited to your needs, budget and accommodation/situation. Technologies available include personal amplifiers, radio systems, induction loop systems and Bluetooth systems.

• Personal amplifiers are small portable devices which amplify ambient sound e.g. in the cinema, group conversations and watching TV. These amplifiers can be used with an induction loop system for the hard of hearing in public spaces – you don’t even need to use your hearing aid. If you are in a meeting or personal conversation, you can also clip a lapel microphone to the person you are speaking to, plug it into your personal amplifier, attach a neck loop and listen to the person through the t-coils in your hearing aids. This helps to cut out any background noise. The downside to this is that you are wired together and can’t move around easily.
• Radio systems use radio waves to send sound to your device. Because they have no wires, you have greater freedom of movement and range. You can sit at the back of a lecture theatre, for example, and listen to the lecturer. You do need to ensure the speaker will wear your transmitter/microphone. You can also buy TV amplifiers which use radio technology and are ideal if you don’t want to trip over any wires. Doorbells, telephones and alarms are other devices which use this technology.
• Induction Loop systems use magnetic fields to send sound from the speaker to your ears. These are often the most affordable devices. You need to have a hearing aid which has t-coils to use them.

You can buy neck loops to wear around your neck for personal use and install a room loop to help hear the TV. With these loops, you can hear it anywhere in the room.

• Bluetooth systems use Bluetooth technology to listen to devices even if they are in your pocket or bag. They are perfect for use with mobile phones and laptops.
• Whilst not a technology, telephone amplifiers are available to help increase the caller’s voice.

ALDs can improve the quality of life for the hard of hearing. The range of devices available can help listening wherever you are and make everyday tasks accessible once more.