Random conversations can be life-changing, often without our knowledge. In October 2010, a lady asked Sound Advice if Hearing Dogs are trained in Ireland. She has severe bilateral hearing issues and believed a trained dog would restore some independence by alerting her to everyday sounds in her environment. Knowing most Hearing Dogs are trained in the
Auditory-Verbal Therapy (AVT) is a parent-centred approach to enabling children with deafness to learn to talk by listening with digital hearing-devices from infancy, where possible. The UK had 14 certified AVT therapists (in 2013), and on April 27th (2013) a free 2-hour information session on AVT was held in Belfast for parents of deaf children
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
Children with hearing-devices, who need to listen in noisy classrooms, were seen to benefit from a three week, intensive active-listening programme to train their brains to filter out background noise as they learned in class. Read: Auditory Training Benefits Children With Hearing Issues Persistent background noise in classrooms means hearing-device wearers can miss entire chunks
In 2012, the US-based Massachusetts Hearing Aids for Children Coalition (MassHACC) founded in 2009, had a bill passed into law, to offset the cost of digital hearing-aids to families with children who have hearing issues. Their debating point was that: Children who do not receive early intervention [for deafness] cost schools an additional $420,000 [each] and face overall
Soundfields for learning, and their procurement, are a recurring question Sound Advice gets from parents and educators. Here’s a “Soundfields 101” piece to demystify the obtaining and use of these audio-systems. Soundfield presentation from Sound Advice’s EdTech event in October 2011: Soundfield Classroom Audio (Andrew Taylor, Classroom Comms) Q: What is a soundfield (audio) system? A:
In response to a mum’s recent mail, here’s what may be expected when a child’s cochlear implant is switched on for the first time. After a cochlear implant is activated, a child can take more than a month to respond to sounds they hear. Then, “the real work begins”, families are told. (Lights, Sound) Activation!
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