If you are a hearing aid wearer, can you go without them? Do you feel comfortable leaving the house if you haven’t got your aids in?

I have a severe hearing loss in both ears – if I am not wearing my aids and somebody wants to speak to me then they have to be close and have to be talking loudly and straight at me. I don’t feel comfortable talking to people if I don’t have my hearing aids in and I wouldn’t even think about leaving the house without them. It’s OK if I’m at home, my Wife and Daughter would know to shout if they needed to. Outside, it would cause too many problems for me, I would be constantly asking people to repeat themselves.

I wear my hearing aids every waking minute – excluding shower time of course! Can you go without yours?

A not always completely serious look at the technology that might, or might not, be available for hearing aid users in the future.

Music and radio player

I like listening to music but I always find it uncomfortable to wear headphones over the top of my hearing aids. There’s a few basic reasons why it can be uncomfortable:

• many types of headphones press down on the ear, which in turn pushes on the hearing aid
• some headphones reduce the air-flow around the ear
• Some can cause feedback from the hearing aid

So, I think it would be really useful, and cool, to have a hearing aid with a built-in music player and radio! You could have the player in your pocket, similar to an iPod, that allows you to select albums or radio channels – but instead of connecting a pair of headphones to the player, the sounds would be wirelessly sent to your aids. This would have several advantages over traditional headphones:

• The aids would be able to better ‘integrate’ the music with background sounds
• An inbuilt volume threshold or cut-off could be used so that the user cannot turn the volume up so much that they will damage their hearing
• It would be a great way to listen to music at school, college or work without anyone knowing!

Nagging filter

If your wife/girlfriend/husband/boyfriend moaning on at you the whole time? Tired of the constant ear-bashing? Simply turn them off with your hearing aid’s new Nag Filter! With the new willyoushutthehellup™ voice recognition feature your hearing aid can learn when your nearest and dearest’s voice and will save you from another tongue-lashing! Simply record someone that you wish to mute by using the “record nagging” button on your hearing aid’s remote control and from then on your aid will recognise when you are being nagged and remove the offensive monologue to save you the hassle of having to ignore it.

Voice changer

Tired of listening to your boss giving you yet another assignment to do? Bored of listening to the monotonous school teacher? Are you finding it hard to stay awake whilst your tiresome neighbour recalls little Johnny’s first swimming trip for the 16th time? If you answered yes to any of these or there is someone else in your life in need of a bit of linguistic magic then transform them with your hearing aid’s new ComedyVoiceChanger™ feature! Simply record the person whose voice you wish to upgrade using the “voice change record” button on your hearing aid’s remote control, select the voice you wish to overlay them with and from then on they will sound much better to you! You can download different famous voices to use for your friends and family. Would your boss sound better as Donald Duck? Make your mother-in-law sound like Darth Vader! Put a smile on your face every morning by waking up to the sound of your husband as Mickey Mouse! Get a hearing aid fitted with ComedyVoiceChanger™ technology and spice up your life!

Personal aid software

These days, all hearing aid manufacturers provide audiologists and aid vendors with software that they can use to tailor an aid to the specific needs of their patient. The hearing aid will be set by default to match the results of your audiogram and can then be tweaked so that the wearer is totally comfortable with the sound. It is also possible to set different programs on most new hearing aids – different programs can be used for different situations, for example: a program for listening to music, a program for situations with excessive background noise or one to give an extra boost in volume. I would like to see basic versions of this programming software given out to the users to enable them to make tweaks themselves. This software could offer a subset of the options available to the audiologist and vendors, such as:

• Being able to add and remove preset programs
• A test mode in which the aid can check itself to make sure it is working properly

Mobile phone

I have never used a mobile phone that hasn’t caused some kind of problem with my hearing aid; they have all either caused feedback in the aid or the phone itself seems to produce a buzzing interference sound. I have always had to hold mobiles at an angle or slightly away from my ear to use them. It would be nice if my hearing aid would act as the ear-piece of my phone; this would probably be similar to the bluetooth mobile headsets that you can get at the moment, but without the mouthpiece attached! Also, the phone’s incoming-call ring could sound directly through the aid – no more missed calls because you never heard the ring.

just read an interesting article on the Times Of India site. It tells the story of three hearing-impaired civil servants who are not receiving work from the civil service due to each of them having a hearing problem. What makes this particularly odd is the fact they all – along with 9 other disabled applicants – passed entry exams to join the service. It seems that their hearing problems were not a concern to their employers at exam-time, but were deemed a problem when it actually came time to give them some work.

The article mentions that the civil-service is required to make sure 3% of there workforce have disabilities to meet the 1995 Disability Act. Two of the applicants were denied work because their hearing loss was deemed too acute and the third, bizarrely, was denied because they were judged to not be sufficiently disabled to qualify.

The original article

I popped into my local GP surgery today and noticed that they had hearing aid batteries at the reception desk.

I asked if I could buy a couple of packets of Size 10 batteries – the receptionist replied, “we don’t sell them, you bring your used hearing aid batteries in and we exchange them for a new packet, free of charge“. Wow! Unfortunately, they didn’t have any size 10s in, but they are going to try and get some in for me.

The receptionist asked me where I got my hearing aids from and it seems that I can get free batteries even though I don’t wear NHS supplied hearing aids.

Does your GP offer free batteries too?

Punters at music venues are damaging their ears as badly as if they spent five hours in a room with a lawnmower, a new hearing study has revealed. 

Researchers at Ear Science Institute Australia measured the volume of music at a dozen clubs around Perth, in the first Australian study to comprehensively calculate venue noise.

They found the average sound level was over 95 decibels – on par with the noise emitted by a lawnmower or circular saw.

But more worrying, says institute director and ear surgeon professor Marcus Atlas, was that interviews with more than 300 patrons showed the average person spent five hours per session listening at that volume.

“These ears are getting an absolute hammering and that’s very alarming,” Prof. Atlas said.

–>Read more

Anthony DeLeon made it through the four roadside bombs without a scratch.

The inside of his right ear, however, was not so lucky.

During his recent year long tour of duty north of Baghdad, the 20-year-old Texan picked up an increasingly common badge of experience from the war in Iraq: hearing damage.

“It just rings all the time,” he said, turning his head slightly so that his left ear — the good one — tilts toward the speaker.

“The first week I got here, was my first (roadside bomb),” said DeLeon, who was with the 1st Battalion, 187th Infantry Regiment, 3rd Brigade Combat Team of the 101st Airborne Division of Fort Campbell, Ky. “[My hearing] got a little better. But then the second one hit, the third one hit, the fourth one hit.”

While loud noise has been part of military life since muskets and cannons were part of the arsenal, Iraq is proving one of the noisiest battlegrounds yet. Roadside bombs — the signature of the country’s insurgency — regularly hit patrols, popping eardrums in their wake.

Also, more soldiers are being exposed to noise: According to a 2004 study by the Veterans of Foreign Wars, 82 percent of soldiers in Iraq engaged in combat, versus an average of 15 percent in other wars.

According to Veterans Affairs data, major hearing loss disability cases held steady through the late 1990s. The number rose markedly from nearly 40,000 cases in 2002 to about 50,000 in 2005, the latest year for which data was available.

In 2005, Veterans Affairs spent nearly $800,000 treating major hearing loss — a nearly 20 percent jump from 2004. Over half of that money was spent on members of the Army.

Medics say roadside bombs regularly rob soldiers’ hearing in Iraq. 

Read more

Hearing aids require a lot of power. Zinc air batteries are used in most hearing aids because they produce a lot of power despite their small size and light weight.

There are several different battery sizes available – obviously you need to make sure you get the right size for your hearing aid. Traditionally, the different sizes were each given a different number: size 5, size 10, size 13, size 312 and size 675 – not the easiest numbers to remember.

To make things easier, a colour system has been introduced – so now:

• Red – Size 5
• Yellow – Size 10 (230)
• Orange – Size 13
• Brown – Size 312
• Blue – Size 675

When you first purchase a hearing aid find out which colour batteries it is using – many will come with some free batteries so you can check those. When you go to purchase new batteries you should be able to instantly see the colour scheme – each battery pack is labelled with the colour and each individual battery in the pack has a coloured tab to match.

Rayovac are a very popular brand of battery – I use them and have been very impressed with with how long they last for and their quality. Activair is another popular brand – they are manufactured by Duracell

A deaf lawyer has won a landmark settlement against a Peterborough court which refused to allow him the use of a sign language interpreter. Jonathan Gibbons has been profoundly deaf since birth but he said staff at Peterborough County Court made no provision for his disability.

It is the first case of its kind where a court has been challenged for failing to provide an interpreter.

Mr Gibbons, a legal adviser for Hands on Access Ltd, brought a case against the Department for Constitutional Affairs (DCA) for unlawful disability discrimination.

Two weeks before Mr Gibbons was due to represent his company at a hearing on June 18, 2004, he contacted the court and requested that a British Sign Language (BSL) interpreter and a note taker be available – a standard procedure in courts up and down the country.

But Mr Gibbons said court staff bluntly turned down his request.

Read full article from Peterborough Today

Rayovac is the #1 best selling hearing aid battery in the world.

Rayovac produce a range of specially designed batteries for all hearing aids types and also cochlear implants.

I have been using Rayovac batteries in my Siemens ITE hearing aids for a very long time. I honestly cannot remember ever having a dud battery, not once, every one has worked and that’s a lot of batteries over the years! I tend to change them once a week, I think they would probably last longer than this but I’d rather change them regularly than wait for them to run out. I don’t want them to run out when I am away from the house and not able to swap them for some new ones. I guess I could carry some spares but I don’t want them to run out in the middle of a conversation.

Most hearing aid suppliers stock Rayovac these days. I’ve started to see them in many supermarkets here in the UK.

I get a box of 10×6 Rayovac batteries from my hearing aid supplier for about £35 including postage.

You can contact Rayovac directly at:

Rayovac Corporation
PO Box 44960
Madison, WI 53744
Customer service: 1-800-323-1993

Fireco Ltd, manufacturers of Deafguard, the wire-free solution for communicating the sound of the fire alarm to deaf and hard of hearing people, claim in a new survey that thousands of hotel guests with hearing difficulties are being treated like an underclass and that 80% of hotels fail to meet their basic needs.To coincide with the second anniversary of the Disability Discrimination Act, Fireco Ltd surveyed 215 hotels across all star ratings with a minimum of 15 rooms and the results were enlightening. Managers were asked if reception staff were trained in basic British Sign Language enabling them to communicate with a deaf or hard of hearing guest and only 6% were able to answer yes.

Only 11% of the hotels had a loop system installed, only 17% had text TV and when asked what equipment they had for deaf and hard of hearing in the event of fire while they were sleeping, only 27% had facilities prepared. The DDA requires reasonable adjustment to be made, and when all the above amenities are lacking deaf people cannot help but feel they are being treated as second-class guests, despite paying exactly the same rates as others.

It is estimated that hoteliers are missing £193m of potential business by not accommodating deaf and hard of hearing people.

Found at –>The Deaf Blog