Deaf people and technology

You may not be aware of the range of equipment available to support deaf people in their daily lives. This is another area which has improved greatly since my childhood. 

Hearing aids

Hearing aids are a type of assistive technology that have been available for some time, but even these have changed greatly over the years. It is worth knowing that hearing aids cannot replace the hearing that you have lost; they can only augment the range of hearing that you have. When I was a child, I had hearing aids which were connected to a box which I had to wear on my front like a harness. When I walked away from people like my mum or my teacher, they would grab the back of it to pull me back like reins! It also got in the way and made me stand out and look different to other children. 

With the advancements in technology, hearing aids have come a long way. They are now digital and provide better sound quality, and can connect to a range of devices via bluetooth. They are more discreet as they are worn behind the ear and come in a range of colours to match your skin tone, or they can be bright and patterned if people want to wear them proudly on display. Even the materials that they are made of have improved. The moulds that go in your ears used to be made of hard material that made your ears really sore after wearing them all day. Now they are much softer and more comfortable to wear, and again come in a range of colours, including glittery ones. It’s especially nice for deaf children to be able to choose the colour that they would like, and is very different from my childhood, when I had to put up with a plain bulky one with no choice at all. 

Smartphones

The use of smartphones has helped deaf people a great deal, as they are now able to make video calls from their phones using apps such as FaceTime and WhatsApp. Although deaf people can use emails and texts, these both rely on having good literacy skills, but for many deaf people English is often not their first language. Video calling makes it easy for individuals to communicate in British Sign Language with ease, and to communicate more visually, for example, being able to show the other person their surroundings. 

The use of video calling has also enabled the use of video relay apps, where a deaf person is able to use British Sign Language to communicate with a remote interpreter, who then makes an outgoing phone call and interprets the conversation. This promotes independence as deaf people are able to make phone calls from their own home or wherever they are, rather than needing to be physically with an interpreter who can make the call. 

Smartphone apps also make it easier for deaf people to travel independently, as they can now use apps to book taxis. The apps are often very visual, as they show you on a map where the driver is, and they give the vehicle registration, making it easy to identify when your taxi has arrived.  

Previously, deaf people would rely on pagers to know when alarms were going off, but now there are smartphone apps which allow organisations to send alerts to their smartphones, rather than having to wear an additional device. 

Household devices

There are many devices which support deaf people in the home. Things like the fire alarm, baby alarm, and front doorbell can all be attached to pagers or can be attached to the lights in the home so that they flash to alert the deaf person. When the deaf person is in bed at night, these can be connected to a vibrating pad which goes under their pillow. A device tells them which alert it is; so they know whether to open the door to the postman or attend to the baby. The vibrating pad is also an alarm clock to wake deaf people up in the morning.

In the olden times (before my time!) when there was no technology like this, deaf people would have to get creative in order to wake up in the morning. People would tie a string around their toe, which they would hang out of the window; and when it was time to get up in the morning, a friendly colleague or neighbour would come to pull on the string and wake them up. The same was true for the babies; before there were alarms to let them know the baby was crying, they would tie a string to the baby’s wrist and their own so they would feel when the baby was awake and moving around and would wake up. 

Join me next time when I will talk about my recent holiday to Israel with a group of deaf people and our experiences there.