Talking Hearing Loss

I am pretty cluey when it comes to assistive listening technology. You could say that it’s a passion project born out of neccessity. For many years I was reliant upon audio streamers and remote microphones. When I first discovered telecoils, I was amazed at what they enabled me to do. It would be safe to say that I felt that telecoils were an essential element to getting the most out of your hearing aids. I fought hard as a telecoil advocate, especially against those who felt that it was outdated and obsolete technology. Sure, it wasn’t perfect but it was universal and I recall many movies at the cinema that I was able to enjoy because the cinema was telecoil enabled.

Most hearing aids now are now bluetooth enabled and while this has enabled us to connect to many devices wirelessly, it hasn’t really offered much benefit for hearing aids users to hear better at the cinema, theatre, conferences, churches, airports or train stations…… until now!!

In 2013, hearing aid manufacturers initiated a conversation with the Bluetooth Special Interest Group (SIG) asking for a single bluetooth standard instead of multiple standards.

The Bluetooth SIG recently announced that have completed specs for this new form of LE Audio which they have trademarked as Auracast.

“Train stations, airports and other public spaces with a lot of background noise can be challenging for people living with hearing loss. Understanding speech in these acoustically challenging environments requires technological support. Solutions such as Auracast^™ broadcast audio can significantly improve the ability of people with hearing loss to communicate. Users of hearing aids or hearing implants will thus be able to move and orient themselves more easily and safely in their acoustic environment in the future. Participation and inclusion will be facilitated, and the overall quality of life will be enhanced.”

Dr. Stefan Zimmer, Secretary General of the EHIMA

Auracast^™ broadcast audio is a new Bluetooth^® capability that will deliver life-changing audio experiences. It will let you share your audio, unmute your world, and hear your best, enhancing the way you engage with others and the world around you.

It will offer

• Better audio streaming quality at a lower bit rate
• Reduction on battery drain so you can stream for much longer periods without needing to recharge your devices
• Broacast audio streaming so multple users share one audio stream
• A less expensive system for venues to install

Let me break down what this all means

A hearing device user can potentially visit their favourite cinema complex, tap into the audio stream for the auditorium they are currently in and have the audio from the movie they are watching streamed directly to their hearing aid or cochlear implant in HD sound.

But why stop there?

Go and see a show at the theatre and have the actor’s dialogue streamed directly to your hearing devices.

Go to a conference and have the keynote speaker’s dialogue delivered directly to your ears

Never miss your flight or train again as you will be able to stream boarding announcements for your gate or platform direct to your hearing devices.

THIS IS GOING TO BE LIFE CHANGING!!

Another feature of Auracast is the ability to stream audio from one source to multiple devices so you and your significant other can both listen to the same music or watch the same movie from a portable device without having to share earbuds. You can each stream to your own devices simultaneously!

Broadcast streaming is going to be life changing for unilateral or bimodal hearing device users.

What do you do when you only use a hearing aid in one ear or you use a hearing aid in one ear and a cochlear implant in the other? Up until now, this type of setup made audio streaming difficult but Auracast is going to change that as it will allow you to share the stream between a hearing aid and wireless earbud (unilateral heraing loss) or between a heraing aid and cochlear implant (bimodal fittings)

Auracast will result in the eventual end of telecoil which means heraing aids can get smaller in size as they dont need to accomodate fitting in a loop anymore.

Cochlear recently announced their Nucleus 8 processor which is Auracast enabled so I would expect to see this awesome technlogy appear in more hearing aids in near future.

The future is going to sound amazing!!!