The Alexander Graham Bell Association for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing launched the Listening and Spoken Language Knowledge Center,
the essential Internet resource for parents of children with hearing
loss, individuals with hearing loss and professionals who serve them. Content on the Knowledge Center will be focused on guiding parents
through the stages that their children will experience as they grow up
with hearing loss.
Most babies are born into the culture and community of their
families. If the family is Latino or Tatar or Han Chinese, so is the
baby. The baby learns the family’s language — “the mother tongue.”
Culture and language are passed down from parents to child. Except when the child is born deaf. Most parents simply whisper and coo to their children in their native
tongues. We had to decide — and quickly — what our daughters’ native
tongue would be. Should we try to get our daughters access to spoken
language through hearing technology, or to immerse them (and ourselves)
in American Sign Language, or to try to do both? Read this story from a mother’s perspective of raising two deaf daughters and the choices they made as parents.
DIGITAL hearing aids can do wonders for faded hearing. But other devices
can help, too, as audio technology adds new options to help people
converse at a noisy restaurant, or talk quietly with a pharmacist at a
crowded drugstore counter. Read about
how technology is helping Richard Einhorn, a composer who suddenly lost
much of his hearing two years ago. He pops on a pair of in-ear earphones
and snaps a directional mike on his iPhone, which has an app to amplify
and process sound.
Share Hearing Screening Results with Your State Early Hearing Detection and Intervention (EHDI) Program:
Spotlight on Florida and Indiana
This edition includes such items as:
The
Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved a groundbreaking trial
to evaluate the safety of using a child’s own cord-blood stem cells to
regenerate cells in the inner ear—and potentially restore the child’s
hearing. The year-long Phase 1 study, which began on Jan. 10, will
follow 10 children who have a moderate to profound unilateral or
bilateral hearing loss.
When Caroline Viney found out her seven-year-old daughter’s hearing was
in decline, she was shocked. Diagnosed in kindergarten, doctors couldn’t
figure out the reason behind the sudden loss. It can cost parents in
Ontario thousands of dollars just to
keep their children learning on the same playing field as their peers.
Auditory verbal therapy, tutors and hearing tools are expensive, leaving
some parents scrambling to keep up with never-ending costs. On top of
that, a lack of dedicated staff in schools to address issues
hearing-impaired children face makes Viney’s job, and others like her,
that much tougher.
People with good hearing also have a keen sense of touch; people with
impaired hearing generally have an impaired sense of touch. Extensive
data supporting this hypothesis was presented by Dr. Henning Frenzel and
Professor Gary R. Lewin of the Max Delbrück Center for Molecular
Medicine (MDC) Berlin-Buch, Germany. The two researchers showed that
both senses — hearing and touch — have a common genetic basis.
Hearing disorders are widespread among school children in Chile. It is
estimated that 15 to 17 percent of children aged between 4 and 14 years
suffer from hearing problems.
There was a time when a child born deaf had few choices. For more
than a century, the only option for parents was to send their son or
daughter away to a boarding school for the deaf. There, the children and
the schools thrived in the shadows, embracing a distinct culture of
silent communication.
Recent advances in medicine and technology
are now reshaping what it means to be deaf in America. Children who
could never hear a sound are now adults who can hear everything. That’s
having a dramatic impact on the nation’s historic deaf schools as well
as the lives of people.