Some technologies hang around for a long time before they are upgraded or replaced by long-overdue innovations. The primary system in place throughout the world’s public buildings to transmit sound to people with hearing aids is running on 40 year-old tech, and has some big shortcomings. Now, WiFiEar, a venture from Belfast, is hoping to improve the lives of millions of people suffering hearing loss, with a solution that runs on the common platform of WiFi.
The core innovation in WiFiEar deals with latency. This is an easy problem to understand if you’ve ever had a faulty phone call where there is a delay on the line. This latency in signal can make it difficult to maintain a conversation. WiFiEar founder Prof Roger Woods explained that the problem occurs above a delay time of about 0.4 seconds. Any lower and the delay tends to go unnoticed. Over 0.4 seconds and the delay can be a distraction. His team at Queen’s University Belfast is developing a technology that uses the building’s existing WiFi system to relay a low-latency signal to the hearing aid wearer. It offers to beat the current solution on various grounds, including price, sound quality, and ease of installation and testing.
The current system for assisting those with hearing aids in public and shared spaces, such as railway stations, banks, offices, theatres and taxis, never suffered the low-latency problem. If you’ve never heard of the Telecoil (or “T-coil”) system, you’d certainly recognise the ear-shaped logo on the doors, walls and reception desks of many such spaces. For a few decades, T-coil has provided a connection between the hearing aid wearer and, say, the bank clerk’s microphone, or the sound system in the theatre. This uses an audio induction loop to provide a connection to the hearing aid that is essentially instantaneous. However, T-coil requires physical installation into the building, typically at a cost of £3–4,000 and requires a specialist to test it. The audio quality is often poor and, I am told, the systems are sometimes switched off in places like theatres, to avoid potential interference problems.
Not only is WiFiEar aiming to provide a cheaper and simpler solution by connecting to WiFi, it would also be operated via the user’s mobile device. Instead of a trained specialist being required to come to a building to determine how well the system is working, anyone with the mobile app could check for free. This then leads to the exciting prospect of a development platform, through which many new features and tools could be offered by third parties. We’ve seen this process before, where a closed, proprietary service is moved to a connected, digital space like web or mobile, and an explosion of community-based innovation occurs. Just look at the likes of Facebook Developers, Open Data government, or perhaps the more extreme case of Tesla and its patents. Providing a development platform can lead to improvements that the platform owners themselves never dreamed of.
The Equalities Act 2010 has driven a requirement for ever more employers, service providers and public bodies to offer aid for people suffering hearing loss. Many companies are now legally required to provide hearing assistance. Fitting-out your building with an expensive system seems a lot less attractive than simply installing WiFi on-site. Not only could the Equalities Act push demand for cheaper, better products like WiFiEar, we can also hope that many smaller bodies, such as local shops, would provide assistance if they could now afford it.
WiFiEar emerged from a collaboration between Queen’s University and the Institute of Hearing Research, a world-leading centre for research into hearing and hearing disorders funded by the Medical Research Council. WiFiEar is one potential solution of several that the university team is pursuing, with the overall intention of improving life quality, not just helping hearing. As people are increasingly augmenting themselves, both physically and digitally, it is not hard to imagine hearing aid technology changing drastically in the next few years. We’ve seen things like glasses and dental braces lose their stigma and become fashionable. Now wider accessories such as prosthetic limbs are not only becoming life-like or attractive, they can even improve our abilities beyond the norm. What we once called “disabilities” could be turning into advantages.
- See more at: http://www.nispconnect.org/techwatch/wifiear-time-to-upgrade-the-hearing-aid/#sthash.sOXty4oh.dpuf
