Geek Chic Fights Hearing Loss

Even in our enlightened age, social stigma still keeps many seniors from getting hearing aids. But a new gadget that converts sound into sight might allow image-conscious folks who hear poorly to enjoy once again an evening at the movies.

When 56-year-old entrepreneur Wayne Wicklund of Fountain Hills, Arizona, began losing his hearing, he didn't really understand what was happening to him. "He noticed people were treating him like he was stupid or like he was ignoring them," says his wife, Anne. Wicklund's loss made it hard for him to sell houses in his real estate business, and he began to rely on his vision more than ever: communicating through sign language and watching closed-caption television. "For people who can't hear," he says, "if they don't see something, it doesn't exist."

Now many venues are exploiting this sensory swap to reach the hearing-impaired by using technologies that convert the spoken word into the written one. If such gadgets gain widespread use, people whose ears have jumped ship can enjoy a sermon or a first-run movie by glancing at a hand-held device or slipping on a high-tech pair of display glasses.

The National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders estimates that one in three people over the age of 60 experiences some hearing loss. And only 20% of them turn to hearing aids, says audiologist Mark Ross of the University of Connecticut, Storrs. For one thing, hearing aids lack high fidelity. Background noise can reduce a hearing aid's effectiveness to zilch, says Karen Frohrib of Self Help for Hard of Hearing People (SHHH), a national organization headquartered in Bethesda, Maryland. At a party or a movie, important sounds such as speech get lost in the din. "If you're relying on your hearing aid, you're working hard and not enjoying the show," says Ross.

For at least half a decade, groups of people with hearing loss have been suing movie theater chains for failing to make films accessible to the deaf and hard of hearing, a violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act. The litigants insist that theaters could solve the problem by adopting a captioning technology that's been around for years: Rear Window, a system used by only about 150 screens nationwide, delivers text through a light-emitting diode (LED) projector at the back of the theater. People capture the text on a transparent acrylic tablet that affixes to their seat.

But Rear Window can be used only in dark movie houses. Research scientist Leanne West of the Georgia Tech Research Institute in Atlanta wondered if she and her colleagues couldn't design something more universal: "We thought, if you can give captions at a movie theater, why not everywhere?" They are now putting the finishing touches on a new device that uses wireless technology to capture a stream of captions sent out by a theater, museum, or other location and then feeds the information to a microdisplay embedded in an eyepiece, the same sort of microdisplay used by the military for communication and targeting. Wearers look through the eyepiece, and an image--in this case captions--will appear to float a couple of meters in front of them, says collaborator Jack Peacock of Peacock Communications Inc. in Marietta, Georgia. At a movie theater, the captions can be adjusted to appear on the screen as subtitles on foreign films do.

The researchers tested the system on 63 people who are deaf or hearing-impaired and who range in age from 15 to 75. Most people got used to reading through the eyepiece within 10 minutes. "Once you find the 'sweet spot' and you know what you're looking for, it's easy to get [the microdisplay] into position," West says. The batteries last about 5 hours: plenty of time for a movie or a stroll through a museum exhibit, she adds. The system should be on sale within a month. Although Peacock says he has yet to set the price for the whole device, the PDA that captures the information can run as low as $200, and the microdisplay costs about $800, although that price will likely drop in the near future. Even at the current price, the two units together run less than many hearing aids, which range from $1500 to $7000 a pair and are not usually covered by insurance.

West says she hopes that the coolness factor might make the wearable captioning device more attractive to people who have shunned hearing aids because, as Ross notes, "only old people wear those things." Reading captions by wearing glasses "would be cool," says Wicklund. Even West's husband, who is not hard of hearing, says he would appreciate getting stats at baseball games through the high-tech gear.

Peacock is developing relationships with different types of venues, including at least one senior residential facility, that could beam captions that would be picked up by the device. In the meantime, several sites are already using hand-held devices such as PDAs to provide captions to the hard of hearing. For example, the Adler Planetarium in Chicago and the Smithsonian's National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, D.C., beam out text near several attractions and movies. Even the Haunted Mansion at Disneyland is closed-captioned for the hearing-impaired.

In the future, improvements in voice-recognition software could allow people to use captioning devices everywhere there's sound. Current programs are only 60% to 70% accurate when translating a voice other than the one that trained them. With better software, PDAs and microdisplays could provide real-time captioning in churches, synagogues, and even grocery stores and malls.

Although no one is suggesting that portable captioning systems will replace common hearing aids, the gadgets provide another option for those who can't hear well in noisy situations--and allow communication for those who can't hear at all. Meanwhile, some companies are working to build smarter hearing aids that dampen background noise and selectively amplify key sounds, such as speech.

Unfortunately, the most useful tools don't get widespread attention because hearing loss is generally underrecognized, says Frohrib. To help spread the word, SHHH sponsors a convention every summer to showcase up-and-coming implements. This year's event will be held in Washington, D.C. "The convention is the absolutely best place to learn about new technologies," says Frohrib. "People can actually try them out." And folks with difficulty hearing can meet others with similar issues--and maybe even take in a movie together.

Mary Beckman is a writer in southeast Idaho who could never hear her mother calling her back into the house.