Deafness
Latest
Apple adapted Bluetooth LE for ultra-low power hearing aids
Last month, Apple and Cochlear teamed up to showcase the latter's new made-for-iPhone implant for folks with hearing loss. Now, Wired has revealed that the pair had to stretch the boundaries of possibility to make one of its signature functions work. After all, pushing audio from a phone to any sort of earpiece will rinse its battery, which ain't great for hearing aids that are in constant use. That's why Apple cooked up a way to push audio to devices using a tweaked version of the Bluetooth Low Energy protocol.
Hey, Snapchat, enough is enough
I discovered Snapchat just a few months ago, and even though I'm much older than most of its users, I fell in love with it. Despite its obtuse interface and obscure controls, I was charmed by the whole idea of churning out quick-and-dirty ephemeral content. Because photos and videos only last 24 hours, I felt less pressure to post perfectly polished selfies and was more at ease with being myself. Plus, I liked the fun emojis, stickers and quirky selfie lenses. But Snapchat took it a step too far recently with a couple of camera filters that weren't as funny as they were racist. This has prompted me to drop Snapchat entirely.
Braille for the mouth could help deaf people hear
The one thing that every technologist shares is the desire to solve a problem, and there are several as-yet unsolved issues that relate to disability. It's not all bad news, however, since in the last few months we've seen inventions that help the blind get around, paraplegics play soccer and stroke victims to communicate. Now, researchers at Colorado State University has developed a way that could help the large proportion of people who aren't able to have a cochlear implant regain a form of hearing.
Deaf gamer connects, educates through Wizard101
Even though she can't hear any of the music or sound effects in the game, Kelsey Fireheart professes a strong love for Wizard101. In a guest post on the KingsIsle blog, Kelsey shares a little of what it's like to be a deaf gamer and why this MMO means so much to her. Shortly after starting her adventures in the game, Kelsey had a profound encounter: "I remember questing in the Pyramid of the Sun of Krokotopia and I bumped into a fellow wizard named Diana Wildheart. She mentioned that she was deaf, and I gasped in astonishment. I replied, I am deaf too! That's when I realized that I could meet fellow deaf gamers through games like Wizard101." Kelsey said that this friendship made her realize that MMOs could be used for more than just fun and to educate others about what it's like to be deaf. "This game is a wonderful educational tool that I can use to teach countless others and it gave me a way of communicating with no barriers. In fact, it gave me a greater purpose within the game," she wrote. Kelsey said that the visuals of the game are quite important to her and that she wished sign language would be available as in-game emotes.
Google aids accessibility with ChromeVox reader, better YouTube captions and more
Engineers from Google have commandeered a booth at this year's CSUN accessibility conference and they're keen to talk up their latest efforts. For the visually impaired, there's now a beta version of a Chrome screen reader called ChromeVox (demo'd after the break), plus improved shortcuts and screen reader support in Google Docs, Sites and Calendar. Meanwhile, YouTube boasts expanded caption support for the hard of hearing, with automatic captions enabled for 135 million video clips -- a healthy tripling of last year's total. Check the source link for full details or, if you're anywhere near San Diego, go and hassle those engineers the old-fashioned way.
Acoustic Poetry concept turns ambient noise into verse
Modern society invests a lot of time and money attempting to drown out our surroundings, but the inability to hear ambient noise can rob one of a sense of place, which can be a very real concern amongst the deaf community. The Acoustic Poetry concept device from British designer Michail Vanis won't miraculously cure the deaf, but it does promise to keep them a bit more in touch. The wooden box is used to capture sound and transmit it to an interpreter, who listens and translates it into text, coming out like something of a free form haiku. It's a communication relay not entirely unlike ones we've seen from a number of other companies, and one that doesn't really necessitate its own stand-alone device. Still, it's nice to see text messaging that can actually keep people more in-touch with their surroundings, for a change -- we still don't recommend using it while driving, however. Video after the break. [Thanks, Ro]
Officers' Quarters: Pitchforks and torches
Every Monday, Scott Andrews contributes Officers' Quarters, a column about the ins and outs of guild leadership. He is the author of The Guild Leader's Handbook, available from No Starch Press. Wipes are a fact of life. Everyone wipes. How you deal with these situations can be crucial to your guild's success. Some guilds cultivate an environment based on blame, where everyone's first thought after a wipe is, "Who messed up?" Sometimes, it's easy to figure out who is at fault: Someone with a spore goes the wrong way, or someone gets mind-controlled by the Blood Queen after failing to bite his assignment. When it's not easy to figure out, some guilds use a different strategy for assigning blame. Here is one such case: I have a real dilemma. I'm an officer, one of six, in a semi-serious raiding guild. We have 30 core raiders who raid with us, and one of them until recently was one of our druid healers, and the issue surrounding him is my dilemma. A little background information on the guild, since it is relevant, is that we have a strict rule involving loot due to some people in the past who have abused our requirement for Vent in that they wouldn't use it, or they'd log in but leave their headsets off. This caused a lot of problems with wipes and caused the officers, GM and co-GM to agree that a rule would be made that was you must be in Vent and actively listening at all times during a raid in order to be eligible for loot. This is what caused the initial problem. The player of this druid healer I mentioned before applied to our guild and told us on the application that he is deaf.
Video relay calling breakthrough uses FaceTime to help the deaf
In the past, the only way for the hearing impaired to communicate was either in person or by way of the TTY (teletypewriter); the TTY is a device that's about as large as a laptop computer, and it allows the hard of hearing to type on a QWERTY keyboard and have the communication transferred. However, iZ breaks that barrier; it will allow the deaf to pull an iPhone 4 out of their pocket and effectively communicate. Now, another technical impediment will be on its way out. This is wonderful news. At first, the technology will only be available through Wi-Fi and the iPhone 4, but it's a safe bet to say that it will eventually filter down to other devices and be able to use cellular service. For now, though, it's quite a start. [via AppleInsider]
UK charity wants hearing loss warnings on DAPs
Even though it may seem rather obvious that listening to loud music (whether through headphones or speakers) has the potential to cause hearing damage, apparently 58% of 16 to 30-year-old Brits are blissfully unaware of this fact, so a UK-based charitable organization is now calling on DAP manufacturers to affix more prominent warning labels to their products. The Royal National Institute for Deaf People (RNID) has apparently contacted all of the leading makers of MP3 players with a plea to include cigarette-type notification on all of their packaging, citing music lovers like 27-year-old "Cath" who claimed, "I was shocked when I found out that by listening to my MP3 player too loudly I could do serious damage to my hearing. If I saw a warning on the box I'd definitely take it more seriously." RNID has even set up a website called Don't Lose the Music where folks like the gentleman who sued Apple can find supposedly unbiased statistics and facts about hearing loss, along with tips -- such as turning the volume down -- that will reduce your chances of going partially or fully deaf. We're most interested in finding out how our readers feel about this issue; i.e. how far do companies need to go in order to convey the dangers of their products -- for instance, do knife manufacturers need to tell us in big bold letters that we risk cutting ourselves, or should the makers of sunglasses warn us not to stare directly into the sun?[Via ArsTechnica]
