The School Of Sign Language have released a series of podcasts that coincide with Deaf Awareness Week to help people learn the basics of British Sign Language (BSL).

“British Sign Language (BSL) is used in preference by 70,000 Deaf and hard of hearing people in the UK. The language is a visual and expressive way of communication. BSL is a language in its own right. It has its own grammar, syntax and structure. The number of qualified interpreters is in dire shortage and the Deaf Community are always looking for more people to learn the Language on a higher level.

School of Sign Language offers People the opportunity to learn British Sign Language and is accessible to every one regardless of age or background.”

You can get the podcasts via iTunes using the following:http://www.schoolofsignlanguage.com/podcasts/alphabet.xmlhttp://www.schoolofsignlanguage.com/podcasts/numbers.xmlhttp://www.schoolofsignlanguage.com/podcasts/family.xmlhttp://www.schoolofsignlanguage.com/podcasts/questions.xmlhttp://www.schoolofsignlanguage.com/podcasts/days.xmlhttp://www.schoolofsignlanguage.com/podcasts/months.xmlhttp://www.schoolofsignlanguage.com/podcasts/colours.xmlhttp://www.schoolofsignlanguage.com/podcasts/greetings.xml

I’m not sure why it’s not a single xml file containing all podcasts? But anyway….. you can also view the videos from their MySpace page:

Alphabet
Numbers
Family
Questions
Days of the Week
Months of the Year
Colours
Greetings

Check ’em out. Great idea and well worth a watch if you don’t know any BSL.

This year, Deaf Awareness Week runs from the 7th to the 13th of May. The slogan they are using this year is “Look At Me“. The theme aims to improve understanding of the different types of deafness by highlighting the many different methods of communication used by deaf, deafened, deafblind and hard of hearing people, such as sign language and lipreading.

Supported by over one hundred deaf charities and organisations under the umbrella of the UK Council on Deafness, Deaf Awareness Week involves a UK wide series of national and local events. “The UK Council on Deafness are delighted to coordinate the all-inclusive Deaf Awareness Week campaign, promoting the positive aspects of deafness, social inclusion and raising awareness of the huge range of local and national organisations that support deaf people and their family and friends.”

The Deaf Awareness Week website. They also have a diary of events that will take place during the week.

I visited my parents today. My Mum was telling me about how bad my Auntie’s hearing is these days. Turns out that she visited her GP about her hearing 2 years ago, was referred to the local hospital and was fitted with digital behind-the-ear hearing aids not long after. So, why is her hearing still so bad? She doesn’t wear her hearing aids, they sit in the cupboard at home.

She is one of the many who prefer to stay in denial about their hearing rather than do something about it. I’ve never spoken to her about it but I would guess she is worried about how the hearing aids will make her look. Will people think less of her? Will they think she is less intelligent? Will they shout or talk really slowly to her? I think this is a genuine worry for many people and that’s why they prefer to struggle on instead of doing the sensible thing.

To all those people out there who are hard of hearing, who have hearing aids and don’t wear them: the best place for your hearing aids is in your ears. All the worries about missing conversation, looking silly by saying the wrong thing and the general feeling of missing out will vanish. At first you will be very contious that people are looking at your ears – they won’t be, most people have better things to do. I honestly believe that you will notice such a difference in the quality of life that your hearing aids give you that you will never look back. Your hearing aids will be back in their rightful place.

This combination of glasses and hearing aids comes from the Delft University of Technology in partnership with Philips.

Embedded along the length of each arm are four directional microphones that localise on the direction in which the wearer is looking and reduce other directional background noise. I’m guessing that because there are four microphones along each arm, it will be possible to program each one to localise in different directions at different levels – hopefully this will be possible via a remote control.

As you can see from the picture, the hearing aid batteries can be recharged by placing the ends of the arms in a charging dock.

This is currently only a conceptual design and will be showcased in 2008. We may, or may not, see the product on the market sometime after that.

When buying hearingaids, it can be tempting to buy one instead of two. It’s cheaper for a start. If you are worried about how you will look with hearingaids, one aid would be easier to hide then two. It might be case of, “I’ll buy one and see how I get on with it“.

If you are suffering from hearing loss in both ears, you need two hearingaids. If you bought glasses, would you consider buying just the one lens?

The brain processes sounds from both ears – if you wear only one hearingaid, the sounds coming into each ear are going to be very uneven, leading to a number of problems:

• Difficulty in locating the source of sounds: The ability to determine where sounds are coming from is called localization. You will reduce you ability to localize sounds by wearing only one hearingaid, most of the sound you will be hearing will be coming through the ear with the aid and your brain will not be able to accurate locate its source.
• Poorer speech recognition: Particularly in noisy situations.
• Increased volume: Your ears should work as a pair. When you wear two hearingaids, you are able to turn their volume down and still hear better than you would with one aid at a higher volume.
• Further hearing loss: Many people believe that by wearing only one hearingaid you could be doing further damage to your non-aided ear. The non-aided ear is not being stimulated as the aided ear is doing all the work – gradually, over time, the non-aided ear will lose it ability to recognise speech simply because it is not being used.

A ground breaking appeal launched in Huddersfield to transform the lives of hard of hearing people in the Third World has been hailed a success.

The hearing aid recycling scheme, the first of its kind in the UK, was launched in November last year to encourage people to give their unwanted aids in a bid to improve and even save lives of people living in developing countries.

Phil Spenceley, registered hearing aid dispenser and director of Specsavers Hearcare Centre in Huddersfield, launched the appeal after reading about the work of the charity Sound Seekers, which works to help deprived children who are heard of hearing.

The appeal was launched in partnership with the charity and Rotary International, and prompted the donation of more than 80 hearing aids to the Market Street Branch.

Phil and a team of trained audiologists now plan to travel to countries including Zambia and Sierra Leone to professionally fit the devices to those who need them most.

I have been thinking of ways that I could expand this blog so that I can offer services and tools that people would find useful. One of the things I would like to do is start a hearing aid price database.

The idea is that someone would be able to either enter a model and see the current price for it or they would be able to enter a price and see what models are available at that price.

It would be impossible for me to keep a record of all hearing aid vendor’s prices for all models so the intention is to have a database of “approximate prices across all vendors”. Something that will give people a ball-park figure – over time the prices will even themselves out and give a reasonably accurate indication of the current price for each model.

I already have some price-lists for a few vendors here in the UK. But this is a call out to you, dear reader: Do you have any price information that you are willing to share? Do you work for a vendor? Have you purchased an aid recently?

I would like to publish prices from all over the world so no matter where you are, please, please send your price info! You can get my email from the contact page – link at the top of this page.

I am not interested in comparing vendor prices – this is not about exposing over-pricing or anything like that. The aim is to create a database that people can use to get (hopefully) up to date hearing aid prices across the industry.

The official Miss Deaf World website has opened an online voting system so you can vote for your favourite contestant.

The competition takes places in Prague on 14th July 2007. There are entrants from every corner of the globe, including: UK, New Zealand, Zambia and Congo.

–>Miss South Africa is currently topping the online voting.

–>Vote at MissDeafWorld.com

Related posts:

1. Miss Deaf World 2007
2. Miss China wins Miss Deaf World 2007

From Widex, the ultimate in ear-bling! A 24-carat gold BTE aid and remote control unit, encrusted with 220 diamonds. Yours for only $50,000.

I’m not sure if this thing actually exists? Might be a PR effort by Widex or a Photoshop knockup by someone with far too much time on their hands.

Miss Deaf World 2007 will be held on July 14 2007 in Prague, Czech Republic. The contest will be organised by s.r.o, the Czech Model Management agency.

You can visit the website at: http://www.missdeafworld.com/miss-deaf-world-2007.htm

Related posts:

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