Miss China, 25 year old Bao Quing Ling, has been crowned Miss Deaf World 2007. In second place was Miss Germany, Kristina Weber. Third place went to Miss Ukraine, Neonila Kudic.

Miss South Africa, Terneil Nicole Oppel, won the Miss Sympathy title – not quite sure what that means? Were the judges sympathetic that she din’t make the top three?

The online voting currently stands like this (and I guess it won’t change much now that the title has been awarded and everyone has gone home):

1. Miss Canada

2. Miss China

3. Miss South Africa

4. Miss New Zealand

5. Miss Great Britain

Check out the official Miss Deaf World website.

Related posts:

1. Miss Deaf World 2007
2. Vote for Miss Deaf World 2007

David Ormerod Hearing Centre are running an offer on Rayovac hearing aid batteries.

The offer is running until 31st August 2007.

The normal price for a packet of 6 Rayovac batteries is around £3; this offer is undercutting that and it’s a case of the more you buy, the more you save. Well worth taking advantage of this offer and stocking up now while they are cheap.

The offer prices are as follows:

Buy 3 packs for £5.99

Buy 6 packs for £11.98

Buy 9 packs for £17.97

Postage and packing is free.

The offer is for all battery sizes. If you don’t know the size of battery your hearing aid uses, you can use the colour of the packet as a reference – read more about battery sizes and colours.

You can order by calling 0845 270 1398 or going to the David Ormerod website.

Research at the University of Essex into aiding people with hearing impairments has won a grant of nearly half a million pounds.

Professor Ray Meddis of the Department of Psychology and his team of Wendy Lecluyse and Robert Ferry, have been awarded £447,000 by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Funding council to develop a computerised hearing dummy. In addition, they have been given £50,000 by the Deafness Research Council.

Professor Meddis has been examining how the ear works for over 20 years. During this time he has created an effective computer model for normal hearing. The planned research will be used to adapt the computer model to simulate hearing difficulties.

The idea is that a patient will be given a hearing test and their results will be fed into the computer model and, hopefully, the data produced will allow the patient’s new hearing aid to be setup exactly as they need it – no more multiple trips back to the audiologist to keep tweaking your aid’s settings.

Professor Meddis and his team are looking for volunteers to help in their research. They would like people to sit for a hearing test. If you would like to volunteer, you can contact him at: rmeddis@essex.ac.uk

This is cool. A company called Good Morning Design have produced hearing aid packaging for Widex that produces what looks like a moving sound wave when the box is opened. Not only that, apparently the sound wave represents someone saying Widex’s “High Definition Hearing” slogan.

Almost any movie you buy on DVD these days will come with optional subtitles (closed captions) in a range of languages – the on-screen text always keeps in sync with the audio and does a great job of allowing deaf and partially deaf people to enjoy film.

Here in the UK, a good percentage of TV shows have either subtitles or, to a lesser extent, a BSL (British Sign Language) interpreter on screen. Many of the subtitles the accompany programmes could be vastly improved – a lot of words are either mispelled or the wrong word is used. Having said that, they are usually good enough to allow you to follow what is going on.

Video games are big business these days. It’s estimated that sales of consoles could reach $16 billion this year. There are a lot of people playing games. So, why are deaf and hard of hearing gamers mostly ignored by the gaming publishers? Many games are story driven and use cinematic scenes to drive the storyline along, elements of which can be critical to the gameplay – if you haven’t been able to follow the plot, you will find it difficult to play the game. As well as that, many games use audio to signal in-game events, a ticking bomb about to explode or an approaching bad-guy and so on – again, if you can’t hear these things the game is effectively ruined for you.

There is an online petition that aims to try and get game developers to think more about the needs of deaf and hard of hearing gamers – you can sign it –>here. This petition and an accompanying open-letter has been picked up by some of the big gaming blogs: Kotaku and Joystiq.

Deaf Gamers is a great site that reviews games from the perspective of the deaf gamer. They do a good all-round review of each game but also rate it as to how well it provides for the deaf and how accessible it is to them.

Disability campaigner David Law from Buxton, UK, has criticised his local shops for not providing adequate service for hard of hearing shoppers. He notes that whilst many shops have induction loop systems fitted, in many cases they either do not work or staff do not know how to use them.

The Buxton Today article goes on to say:

Mr Law, who has used a hearing aid for much of his adult life, told the Advertiser: “I don’t see the point of shops having an induction loop system available if it does not work or is not set up properly.

“All I seem to get from people is ‘sorry it seems to be faulty’ or ‘we don’t know how to work it’.

“I want to see induction loops working all the time, so people can just walk into a place, switch their hearing aid to the ‘T’ position, and use the system without feeling embarrassed.”

It is estimated that around two million people in the UK use a hearing aid, a number which continues to increase as technology improves and hearing aids become more widely available.

Eight years ago a survey carried out by consultancy firm Grass Roots revealed 61 per cent of loop systems tested were not working properly.

High Peak MP Tom Levitt, a former trustee of the Royal National Insitute for the Deaf, highlighted Mr Law’s concerns in one of the weekly Advertiser columns.

“The law does not oblige shops to have an induction loop, but it does oblige them to make ‘reasonable adjustments’ to ensure their services are accessible,” said Mr Levitt.

“What Mr Law has exposed is that a lot of these shops only use the loop for token purposes as staff do not know how to use it and it is not switched on or not working.

“Having a loop that is not used or that does not work is in many ways worse than not having one at all, because it leads people with hearing aids to be disappointed.”

Alyson Rose, spokeswoman for the Disability Rights Commission, added: “If shops have the system working and the staff are trained to use it, they may get an increase in the number of users who are hard of hearing.”

The original article

Northwestern University scientists are looking into using lasers that can trigger nerve firings, in order to increase audio quality in cochlear implants over the traditional electric discharge method.From MIT Technology Review:

With conventional cochlear implants, electrical signals spread in the wet, salty environment of the body, muddying the signal. That makes it difficult to trigger specific populations of nerves inside the cochlea. Further complicating matters, simultaneous pulses in different locations merge with each other, stimulating the cochlea everywhere instead of in the desired locations.Engineers work around the problem by triggering only one or two of the 16 or 24 electrodes in the inner ear at a time. It’s done so rapidly that the user has the illusion that all of the electrodes are firing, but the result is still a relatively crude simulation of normal hearing. To many cochlear implant users, voices sound mechanical and music sounds washed out.

An infrared laser, on the other hand, can be beamed at nerve fibers with pinpoint accuracy. Furthermore, the directional nature of laser light means that optical pulses in different places won’t interfere with each other. The increased precision of neural stimulation would make voices and music sound more natural, and users would be able to converse in noisy environments more easily.

While it’s not yet clear why infrared radiation can trigger activity in the auditory nerves, Richter hypothesizes that it heats the cells slightly, opening ion channels in the cell walls and sending an electrical signal down the length of the neuron.

Details at MIT Technology Review…

Workers with hearing problems are losing more than snippets of conversation, they’re losing money.

Two-thirds of people who suffer from hearing loss are below retirement age and still working. If you’re one of them, trying to hide or ignore the problem could cost you, a new study has found.

Untreated hearing loss, depending on how severe the loss is, cut household income by an average of nearly $23,000 per year, according to the study by the not-for-profit Better Hearing Institute.

Hearing loss prevents employees from fully engaging in meetings and conversation, which fuels anger, instability and anxiety, while giving co-workers the impression that they’re less competent, said Sergei Kochkin, the institute’s executive director.

People with untreated hearing problems are more likely to work into their 70s and 80s because lower salaries along the way add up to less retirement and investment savings in the end, Kochkin said.

“You’re going to be greeting people at Wal-Mart and Costco to supplement your income,” he said.

While many workers fear that getting a hearing aid will make them appear old or disabled, the opposite is true, Kochkin said.

The use of hearing aids mitigated the effects of hearing loss on income by about 50 per cent, the survey found.

“Hearing loss is much more noticeable than hearing aids,” he said.

Original article.

The RNID have released a report called “Like it Loud?” as part of their Don’t Lose The Music campaign. The report is a call to both the Government and the Music industry to take steps to promote the issue of noise as a public health concern.

The research in the report shows an alarming ignorance among young people about the damage they are potentially doing to their hearing at gigs, clubs and other noisy venues. The report argues that in order for people to take responsibility for protecting their hearing, they must be given clear information about dangerous noise levels and steps they can take to prevent hearing damage.

The RNID calls on the Government to

• Establish a recommended noise level for music events and venues
• Educate young people about noise as a public health risk

and the Music industry to

• Ensure venues have areas will people can take a break from the noise, in which noise levels should not exceed 85dB
• Publish noise levels in venues along with warnings and advice about hearing damage
• Make earplugs readily available and promote their use

You can read the full report here. It has also been mentioned on the BBC.

A project designed to make football more accessible to deaf children is being launched by the National Deaf Children’s Society (NDCS) and the Football Foundation.

The NDCS Deaf Friendly Football Project will enable every deaf child in England access to the nation’s great game over the course of the next three years. It is being funded with the help of a £211,608 grant from the UK’s largest sports charity, the Football Foundation, and with additional funding from Phonak UK and Sportsmatch.

The three year NDCS Deaf Friendly Football project will award clubs who meet the needs of deaf children with ‘Deaf Friendly Accreditation’. Through the accreditation scheme clubs will be able to access deaf awareness training, information, resources, equipment and support.

The project will also actively recruit and train deaf adults to become qualified football coaches. This work will be combined with a programme of Deaf Friendly Football Festivals, the establishment of regular football opportunities, a national database of Deaf Friendly Football Clubs, tournaments and conferences to provide opportunities for deaf children and young people to participate in football at all levels.

Ian Holloway, Manager of Plymouth Argyle FC and father to three deaf children is backing the project:
“In the UK today there is a real lack of football opportunities available from grassroots to elite level for deaf children and young people. Deafness makes it harder for children to communicate which can be very isolating. Many deaf children and young people find it difficult to participate in football because clubs are not set up to provide good communication.

“The NDCS Deaf Friendly Football project has the potential to change this and revolutionise the sport at all levels for deaf children and young people. Deaf children in England with a passion for football will now have the chance to really get involved in football!”

The Football Foundation has so far funded 204 projects worth over £31m that are aimed at removing the barriers to sport for the most disadvantaged people in society.

Paul Thorogood, Chief Executive of the Football Foundation, says:
“The Deaf Friendly Football Project will make sure deaf children can get the same enjoyment from our national game that the rest of us take for granted. I am delighted that the Football Foundation is supporting this initiative with over £211,000 and applaud the NDCS for making it happen.

Football Foundation funding is provided by the Premier League, The Football Association and the Government. Their investment is opening up access to sport for more people than ever before through projects like this.”

The NDCS is the only UK charity solely dedicated to the support of deaf children and young people, their families, and professionals working with them. Three babies are born deaf every day and 90 per cent of deaf children are born to hearing parents with little experience of deafness.

To find out how you can get involved in the NDCS Deaf Friendly Football Project contact

Rob Danson, NDCS Football Development Officer, email football@ndcs.org.uk

SMS 07966 341022 or the NDCS Events Team on 0121 2349820

From: http://www.fulhamdfc.com/?fid=161&pid=542