When a baby gazes intently at a speaker’s mouth, this indicates they are working to learn to form syllables for themselves, instead of just babbling.

Read the piece >> Babies Learn Language By Reading Lips

From about 1 year old, the babies tended to shift back to eye contact, from lip-reading. If a new language was heard, the lip-reading tended to re-start.

Babies who are deaf would rely on this lip-reading ability more than others, and continue lip-reading past the researchers’ watershed age of 12 months.

Hearing devices can simplify lip-reading for all ages.  Essentially, babies with hearing-devices can gain early language by lip-reading and hearing sound.

Further Reading

* Babies appear to lipread as part of language-acquisition

* Parent Question: How Early To Teach Lip-Reading?

* Lipreading For Children: Challenges And Benefits

* Lipreading: The Challenges And Benefits

* Lip-Reading Training Benefits From Technology

* Listening & Speakng: A Link To Reading/Writing?

Date: Friday January 27th 2012

Time: 6.30pm

Venue: Room 3074, 3rd Floor, Arts Building, TCD

The evening will begin with an overview of the Disability Access Route to Education (DARE), and will outline the range of supports available at TCD.

Advice on course choices at Trinity, and accessibility will also be available. See TCD’s information website for second-level students with disabilities.

To register for this event, email Carol at disab@tcd.ie, or call 01-896 3111.

Trinity College Dublin has over 900 students with disabilities, the highest number of the colleges in Ireland. All potential CAO/DARE applicants with disabilities are welcome to this information evening.

Further Reading:

* Advice For Deaf Students Going To Third-Level

* What Tertiary Supports Do Deaf Students Need?

* IDK’s Post-School Options Seminar (November 2011)

* TCD Summer School For Deaf Students: June 2011

Our office in Terenure is very close to the Dodder, which is Dublin’s second river after the Liffey. Both source four miles apart in the chain of hills called the Dublin Mountains just south of Dublin county. So, we’re ‘keeping it local’!

These note-card packs can be bought directly from IDK by:

1. Posting a cheque or postal order to IDK at Terenure Enterprise Centre, 17 Rathfarnham Road, Dublin 6W, with your name, address and number of packs required. Please add EUR 1.00 per pack for postage.
2. Emailing a PayPal payment to info@irishdeafkids.ie with the number of card-pack/s required and postage total. We will confirm your payment at this end. Please add EUR 1.00 per pack for postage on all orders.

If you are buying these notecard-packs from overseas, please email IDK upfront at info@irishdeafkids.ie, to confirm the postage costs. Many thanks!

Proceeds from these cards will benefit the work of Irish Deaf Kids, in 2012. The photographer is IDK founder, Caroline Carswell (Dublin, Ireland).

A suggested seasonal or birthday gift for all children aged 4 to 8:

“A Birthday For Ben” – A Story About Deafness

This childrens’ book can be posted with your cards-order. Just let us know!

~ Team IDK

PS: the photo on these cards was one of our Christmas 2011 card designs.

Think of SMS texting on mobile phones, web-chat (via text, video or voice), and Facebook posts as everyday solutions for universal access. Real-time captioning (CART) and captioned web-videos similarly ‘give’ verbal dialogue to deaf/hard-of-hearing people, or those with English as a second language.

Too many firms (technology and other) don’t stop to think how minor tweaks to their products or services might benefit a segment of their user-base. It’s akin to these firms saying “we don’t have any customers who’re deaf”. They do. Those customers don’t always self-identify, but are potential customers.

Off-the-shelf technologies such as whiteboards, smart-phone applications or microcircuit parts (for example) can be customised to make ‘new’ products for daily use by students or people who are deaf and/or hard-of-hearing.

CART is an example of a customised technology solution from redirecting stenography tools and skills (stenotyping) to benefit a person or audience with hearing issues while providing a transcript of a lecture or a class.

In Australia, a deaf high-school student told how CART support at school led him to consider a possible career as a computer programmer. Researchers in the US also found deaf students’ retention rates and learning to improve in technology-rich classrooms with tablet PCs and collaborative software.

With this technological advantage, the value of re-designing a firm’s existing products and services to benefit students with hearing issues, is very clear.

** Source: Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Public Committee Hearing, October 12th, 2011.

Further Reading

* Deaf Children and Inclusive Education (Disability Law News, March 2010)

* Touch-Screen Technology Boosts Literacy In Deaf Children

*IDK’s Technology-Education Event (October 10th, 2011)

* iPhone FaceTime App Levels The Video-Chat Field

These new hospital newborn hearing test programmes, costing in the region of €1.1 million annually, are part of the HSE’s Newborn Hearing Screening Programme for the entire HSE South region, for early 2012 (encompassing Carlow, Cork, Kerry, Kilkenny, South Tipperary, Waterford and Wexford).

The HSE is investing €11 million annually in audiology services, with an additional €3.7 million in 2011 to improve care pathways. By November 2011, South Tipperary General Hospital was to offer UNHS, the South Tipp Today newspaper reported in June, but this roll-out may now be delayed.

Once the HSE South region completes its UNHS rollout, over 17,000 babies will be screened per year at the region’s six maternity hospitals – including babies born outside of hospital. The UK public-services firm, Northgate, has a two-year contract to manage the HSE’s UNHS programmes in Ireland.

Further Reading

* Waterford Regional Hospital Next In UNHS Line

* Cork University Maternity Hospital Begins UNHS

* Publication of HSE South Audiology Review, 2009

* UNHS: Obligatory, Voluntary Or Not Necessary?

These card-packs can be bought directly from IDK by:

1. Writing to IDK at Terenure Enterprise Centre, 17 Rathfarnham Road, Dublin 6W, with your name, address, number of card-pack/s and a cheque or postal order. Please add EUR 1.00 per pack for postage.
2. Emailing a PayPal payment to info@irishdeafkids.ie with the number of card-pack/s required and postage total. We will confirm your payment at this end. Please add EUR 1.00 per pack for postage on all orders.

If you are buying these card-packs from overseas, please email IDK upfront at info@irishdeafkids.ie, to confirm the postage costs. Many thanks!

Proceeds from these cards will benefit the work of Irish Deaf Kids, in 2012. The photographers are Sonja Kroll (Dublin/Germany) and Caroline Carswell.

Here’s a possible Christmas gift for all children aged 4 to 8:

* “A Birthday For Ben” – A Story About Deafness

This childrens’ book can be posted with your card order. Just let us know!

Team IDK

Presentation slides from the day >>

New Digital Tools

Five key speakers presented at this event. IDK founder, Caroline Carswell, opened with a summary of her personal and professional background with first-hand experiences of hearing issues. Caroline also outlined how digital tools can improve inclusion for deaf and hoh children in mainstream schools.

The Case For Technology

Communication technologies that benefit deaf or hard-of-hearing students, also suit the hearing public by enabling communication with both groups.

The Baby Hearing-Aid

The second speaker was Geoffrey Cooling from Widex Ireland, with a very informative overview of Widex’s baby hearing aid, the ‘WIDEX BABY 440‘. This is the only hearing aid in the world for babies, and its use from such an early age gives it a major role in language acquisition. While this device is not readily available in Ireland, Widex is working on distribution channels.

Subtitling In Schools

Next up, was Miriam Walsh from Digitoc Media, who presented on digital teaching in schools, plus tools for teachers to caption web-videos for use in classrooms. With YouTube’s new teachers’ channel, the timing is opportune.

Brian Greene from qued.tv continued the subtitling theme by showing how digital tools can make MP3, radio, Vimeo and YouTube files more accessible.

Classroom Soundfields

Andrew Taylor from Classroom Communications concluded by advising on soundfields in classrooms, and on linking hearing-devices to a soundfield. To his credit, he made a potentially technical topic very accessible to attendees.

(compiled by Nicola Fox)