Article
A hearing aid demonstrator to showcase aided benefits and raise awareness of own hearing ability (en)
* Presenting author
Abstract:
A significant proportion of people with hearing impairment wait many years until they seek treatment and some refuse it altogether. Untreated hearing loss has many negative consequences both for the individual and society in general. One reason for delayed intervention is that hearing-impaired individuals often fail to see the value of hearing treatment because they overestimate their own hearing abilities. To address this problem, we currently develop a hearing aid demonstrator that will allow people to experience potential aided benefits easily. More specifically, we work on a mobile, hygienic, and easy-to-use demonstrator, which can be used in clinical settings or at public events, for example. The demonstrator is developed as part of a cooperation between the University of Southern Denmark, the German Institute of Hearing Aids, and the University of Applied Sciences Lübeck, which is supported by the Interreg funding program of the European Union. In this contribution, we show the concept of the hearing aid demonstrator, explain the main technical implementation, and present its application in practice. We anticipate that the demonstrator will be of use for showcasing possible benefits from amplification and advanced hearing aid features and that this will lead to more hearing aid candidates seeking help.