To wake up
at the right time in the morning
it is necessary for me to use a vibrating wristband alarm.
[wristband alarm vibrating]
Then, when I get up, the first thing I do
is to put on my hearing aids.
And I switch them on.
[ventilation whizzing]
[engine starts]
In my job as an educational audiologist and hearing consultant nationwide
I participate in a lot of different meetings.
CENTRE FOR HEARING LOSS
Which assistive listening systems I choose to use depends on different things.
For instance, who else will be in the meeting?
Will I be the only one with this need or will there be others?
The reverberations and acoustics of the room.
And where in the room will I be positioned according to where everybody else is.
[in Danish] Have you got children ready to start school?
[in Danish] Yes, a boy with a moderate hearing loss.
[in Danish] - Would be so kind to repeat? - Yes. I have the audiogram right here.
[in Danish] It is in the high frequency that he is challenged.
[in Danish] It is actually the sounds F, S, and T
that he does not master in his pronunciation.
At any meeting it is important to also be able to lipread.
So I preferably position myself with my back towards the windows.
[in Danish] He cannot hear the sounds even with the hearing aids on.
Every now and then it can be more convenient to use public transport.
When I do that, it can be really hard to understand the messages
from the loudspeakers.
So I really do rely on the information
I can get from the different screens provided on the station.
[indistinct message from the loudspeakers]
Indeed also the screen on the train
telling me when I will reach my destination and I need to get off.
[indistinct message from the loudspeakers]
[in Danish] I will say good-- [distorted sound]
[in Danish] Yes. Yes.
[in Danish] It is pretty intense. This is annoying...
When this committee under the Danish association of hard of hearing meets
we use this very room, because we know very well
the acoustics here and also the assistive listening system.
Five of the participants here
also rely very much on the provided speech to text
at this 3-hour long meeting and it helps us concentrate much better.
After any meeting it is our responsibility to give feedback
if we find something in the accessibility that did not work
as well as we had expected.
And in this case in the assistive listening system
we found hissing. There was delay.
There was distortion.
[distorted in Danish] They inform about users and what is new in the field.
And one participant experienced a loud feedback in the hearing aid
when activating the microphone.
[loud feedback] [in Danish] We are pleased we managed
to expand the range of competent people.
[in Danish] So we are looking forward to the cooperation.
This causes confusion throughout the meeting
for all participants both those hard of hearing
as well as those with a typical hearing.
Throughout Europe
I have experienced these failures for various reasons
at different places several times.
I am very confident now
that it is more and more in use to give this kind of feedback.
And because of this feedback
professional hearing engineers can service these systems.
It is important that life is not just about work all the time.
I am very fond of my big dog, an Airedale terrier.
And I so enjoy every day that I have to take him out for his walks.
And for that I use only my hearing aids.
It is possible for me to also meet the neighbours
and have a chat.
If I misunderstand something, then I will need to ask for repetition
or for clarification of course.
[phone ringing]
[in Danish] - Oh! - Hi, what are you doing?
[in Danish] We are looking at grandma! We want to see grandma.
I also have my three grandchildren.
And of course, I cannot see them everyday
but I do appreciate the new technology.
Now it is possible for me to stream sound from my iPhone
to my hearing aids.
This enables me to FaceTime with them.
[in Danish] - There are swings on it, there. - There are swings on it there.
When in the European Federation for Hard of Hearing
we use online platforms for our meetings, for instance Zoom
they all provide automatic speech recognition for that purpose.
But unfortunately that is not very correct
and it does cause some confusion and many misunderstandings.
And I am an old teacher of the deaf.
So I know we must have at least several receivers.
We should also...
be able to have more than one microphone
because otherwise we cannot include these kids.
We much prefer to have a live speech-to-text interpreter
which is also possible.
This is a much better quality, always.
When watching live programs on television it is sometimes possible
to have them live texted.
To have live subtitles on them.
But unfortunately they appear with quite a delay
and sometimes also out of sync.
Ahh. Did you notice this?
What we like is to have subtitles
that follow the speech that appears in the program
so that our brains do not have to split up and work on two different tracks.
[speaks indistinctly] [loud sound from TV]
[in Danish] What?
[loud sound from TV] - Can you turn that off so I can hear you?
This is why the Live Text Access (LTA) project is of great importance to us now
so that we can have a higher quality in the speech-to-text or subtitling services.
As a hard-of-hearing person myself
I base my life now on use of audiological treatment.
I use gadgets.
I add on assistive listening systems.
And I also use speech-to-text from time to time.
There are many options and many choices to be made.
And even though we have all these options, there are still challenges in our lives.