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School Acoustics – By An Educational Audiologist

Wednesday, May 29th, 2013

With children under 13 years of age most challenged by ambient classroom noise, school acoustics are vital to childrens’ learning in their formative primary or elementary schooling years, says audiologist Jane Madell.
Read >> How Classroom Acoustics Impact Learning
Crucially, Madell notes a major change in deaf education:
Maybe only 15 years ago, many children with hearing loss were [...]

A Nurse With Hearing Issues Retrains In Audiology

Monday, April 29th, 2013

Nursing – and audiology. Two degrees that a deaf person might not think of, or be encouraged to take. Zoe Williams, of Ballarat, Victoria (Australia), has changed that perception. Now a qualified audiologist, she shares her story.
See / Read >> A Day In The Life of An Audiologist
Zoe says she doesn’t have anything more to [...]

NDCS Queries UK Councils On Education Supports

Wednesday, April 24th, 2013

Fresh concerns over cuts to education supports for deaf/hoh pupils in the UK have emerged, after one-third of councils cut supports in 2011. NDCS is also reporting that almost one-half of London’s local councils did not respond to a Freedom of Information request to disclose spending plans by April 2, 2013.
Read: Charity’s fears over cuts [...]

“I Am The Happiest Deaf Teenager On Facebook”

Thursday, April 11th, 2013

His profile reads “I am the happiest deaf teenager on Facebook”. UK-based Jamie Williams started writing a blog after a friend said how happy and content he is, even when he’s deaf. And his writing ability shows in the blog.
Read >> Deaf teenager’s blog takes Facebook by storm
Jamie’s blog is “A Deaf Boy in A [...]

“He Is Not Me”: A Book On Mainstream Education

Monday, March 25th, 2013

A new book, “He Is Not Me”, by Stuart McNaughton, tells the story of being deaf from birth – and opting for a cochlear implant in his twenties. Notably, Stuart’s parents mainstream-educated him, to equip him with real-world skills from the very start – with the support of teachers and professionals.
Read >> He Is Not [...]

Crowd-Computing: New Solutions For Captions

Tuesday, March 19th, 2013

Speech-to-text automation has a huge role in creating classroom captions for students with hearing and other issues, who don’t always note-take in class. To address the multi-speaker shortcomings of automated caption solutions, a program, Scribe, was devised at the University of Rochester.
Scribe Tweaks Speech-To-Text Automation – With Humans
Scribe works by crowd-sourcing humans to caption speech [...]

Bilateral Cochlear Implants: Hearing With Two Ears

Thursday, March 14th, 2013

With bilateral cochlear implants (both ears) in Ireland’s news recently, here’s some information that may answer readers’ and families’ questions.
Read: Who is a cochlear implant candidate?
Some unilateral (single-ear) implant-wearers keep a hearing-aid in the other ear, and can recognise speech by listening through two ears. Others choose to ‘go bilateral’ with 2 cochlear implants, to [...]

Study Supports For Doctors With Hearing Issues

Tuesday, March 12th, 2013

An article, “Deafness Among Physicians and Trainees: A National Survey“, in the February 2013 issue of Academic Medicine, gives insights to how doctors with hearing issues access their training and get to work in the mainstream.
Read: Are deaf/hoh physicians getting needed supports?
Amplified stethoscopes (89%) were the most frequent accommodation, with hearing-devices/FM (32%), realtime captions (21%), sign [...]

California Student Seeks Captions Instead Of FM

Friday, March 8th, 2013

In 2009, a California-based high school student with a cochlear implant asked her school district to provide realtime captions in class, instead of a FM system, which she said gave her headaches and relayed static noise. At end-2012, the case was reopened with a similar, second case in the state.
Read: Student asks Tustin schools to [...]

Teacher Question: Reading/Listening On The iPad

Wednesday, March 6th, 2013

A teacher asked about using an iPad with a pupil who’s partially hearing:

What apps for reading and English did the IDK team recommend?
How can the student listen to audio files and Skype, from their iPad?

The student wears Phonak hearing aids and uses a FM system in school.
This list suggests apps for students with reading challenges:
Fifty [...]

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