Dublin January, 2015 Dear Mrs Speechie (as you always will be known), In recent months we discussed how today’s deaf children can become verbal, thanks to newborn hearing tests and timely access to cochlear implants and digital hearing devices. Some areas of concern still existed however – namely that: Ireland has lacked a specialist speech therapist for deaf
Educators, speech therapists and healthcare workers who use Skype, will like this news. Skype has developed its Translator beta tool to remove spoken-language barriers between different nationalities (and shared-nationalities, in the case of people with hearing issues). English and Spanish are the first two languages supported by Skype Translator, which uses machine-learning to achieve smarter outcomes
For the last blog post of 2014, here are some recent media pieces, to remind ourselves how early access to hearing and speech services can improve childrens’ life prospects. Lydia Denworth (author of I Can Hear You Whisper) Lydia Denworth’s recent post in Time Magazine, Raising A Deaf Child Makes The World Sound Different, will resonate with parents of
The Phonic Ear hearing-aid, that big beige box worn in the 1970s by kids who were deaf. Book illustrator Cece Bell rewrote her life story this year, with a Phonic Ear giving her super-powers in a graphic novel. Bell’s self-deprecating humour about wearing the hearing-aid and the everyday social interactions it generated will be welcomed by fellow wearers. Interview: Cece
A Sound Advice seminar in Dublin, “The Link Between Hearing And Speech” (December 5th) explored how we hear with our brains with, and without hearing devices. Strategies for early language development by parents with babies and young children were also shared. Thirty Million Words Parallels were seen in the thirty million words concept for hearing and deaf children, with
Sound Advice created an e-book, “Teaching A Deaf Child To Hear And Speak: Perfectly“ (A Father’s Love), by US-based author, James Hall, whose deaf daughter hears and talks. Mr Hall contacted Sound Advice after spending four years on a journey of research to find out how a deaf child can acquire speech, and documenting his findings along
Students at Loyola University, Maryland are captioning live sports events to gain critical work experience and enable the university to deliver on its campus-wide accessibility goals. Read: Loyola students to provide live captioning for athletics events Ironically, the routine glitches in YouTube’s auto-captions service led the university to hire a student volunteer team to caption its official videos. From there, the
Being a girl can help, at times. Especially when pitches to win tickets to [inter]national events are offered in an attempt to redress the gender imbalance in the IT industry. This specific event was Web Summit 2014 in Dublin, one capital in the internet of things (IoT) with Santander (Spain), Chicago (US) and Christchurch (New Zealand). A double of sorts resulted
All childrens’ future language development can be determined by the way in which their parents, family and caregivers talk to them during infancy. Impact Of ‘Parentese’ On Siblings’ Language On this point, a research group of mothers of twins (one child being deaf) was found to speak vowels more clearly when talking to their infants regardless
Disruptive principles in business leadership were recently presented by Dr Trish Gorman (US) in Dublin, at a masterclass with the IntertradeIreland All-Island Innovation Programme. For Sound Advice, this masterclass confirmed: Sound Advice is a disruptive entity (modernising Ireland’s deaf sector and education) The disruptive effect of bilateral cochlear implants (children hear speech in both ears) Visible role models transmit core values, coach
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