Say Again, Santa? Some Holiday Lipreading Advice
Santa Claus may be the hardest person on earth to lipread — or, more properly, speech read. He is, in fact, a speech reader’s nightmare, thanks to the big, fuzzy beard and mustache that obscure his lips, the tight, padded suit that restricts his movement, and his crinkly, barely visible eyes — all things that keep us from effectively reading his lips, face and body to figure out what he’s saying. That’s because speech reading involves all these visual clues gleaned …
The Skype Solution for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing
The other day I was sitting in my neighborhood Starbucks surrounded by the chatter of conversation and people hunched over their laptops or newspapers. At one table, however, something remarkable was going on. A woman was sitting in an armchair, her laptop perched on a table in front of her. She was having an exuberant conversation — in sign language. Not a sound came from her except for an occasional guffaw, but her conversation was so animated you almost felt you …
Study: Hearing Aids May Help Protect Brain Health
For several years, studies have linked hearing loss and dementia, but no major study has addressed the big question: Could using hearing aids reduce the risk of cognitive decline? Now an important new French study finds that older adults who use hearing aids experience the same rate of cognitive decline as their peers with normal hearing. In other words, while hearing loss is associated with accelerated cognitive decline, hearing aids can slow that from happening, researchers say. The study, published …
Test Your Hearing at Home: Free, Easy and Reliable
What if you could accurately test your hearing at home at no cost and in complete confidentiality? All it takes is a telephone. Beginning this month, AARP is offering its members free access to the National Hearing Test, a telephone test developed by researchers at Communications Disorders Technology and Indiana University, based on a Dutch model. The research for the nonprofit test was funded by the National Institutes of Health. Since 2014, when it was introduced, about 40,000 Americans have …