Technology Advances for Overcoming the Communication Barrier

Jay Thurman, Hearing Resources, Portland, OR

>> Okay. There is just one announcement that we have so far this morning, and that is that there is going to be a luncheon today, and they will have a speaker at the luncheon, and we would like to have you all come and not run away. The lunch is included here, and we still have the program that's going on for the luncheon speakers, and it's on education. The other thing I don't know if anybody heard about. I will pass on a little news. There is a volcano that erupted outside of Brookings and the lava is going into the ocean, and they are feeling tremors outside of Brookings, and my mother told me there was some beached whales out on the coast that were found dead. I'm not sure exactly where the whales were, but I thought it was an interesting bit of announcement to let you know. And the Hawthorne bridge will be closed on the weekend because they are filming a movie called "the hunted" and so don't go over the Hawthorne bridge.

>> Good morning. My name is Jay Thurman. I'm with Hearing Resources here in Portland. Is the volume a little high? I have a nice loud voice to start with. So is that better like that? It's hard to adjust the mikes when you are the one listening and talking at the same time. I'm with Hearing Resources here in Portland, Oregon. We deal in assistive technology primarily. I started out as a hearing aid dispenser. Was involved in manufacturing for a period of time, did some educational work for one of the companies here in town where we did classes all over North America on hearing aid technology.

Got back into dispensing years ago when we opened our own office, and at that time had figured that we better put my money where my mouth had been all those years, and we put in the assistive technology because whenever I was teaching, I was teaching that hearing aids are wonderful but it's not the whole answer it takes other things, and now we got into the assistive technology and that's better than 90% of our business for the personal equipment all the way up to wide area systems, workplace accommodations, conference rooms and such. So what I'm here today to do is we want to talk about three basic areas right now that are fairly hot areas. One of them is in the FM technology with the Microlink that's come out. It's been out for a while. Not a lot of people know about it, and some of the advantages to it, a few of the disadvantages. So we want to cover that following this morning. We also want to do small area amplification systems. There is some things happening in the next few years where the federal government is currently writing standards for ambient noise and reverberation time in classrooms, and we want to cover why they are doing that and some of the things Sound Field equipment can do to help improve the learning environment there, and then we want to talk a little bit about computer aided interpreting, in particular the I-Communicator that I'm familiar with, some of the things that's going on in speech recognition for things in the classroom and such. Where it works well and where it doesn't. Some of the problems with the current technology we will also cover in that.

So to start with we want to start with the Microlink and they tell me I have only 75 minutes so excuse me if I cover this a little fast on the surface. Each one of these could go very well for the whole session by itself. We will cover a little of it. I will have questions at the end. As we are going along if you have any questions don't hesitate to interrupt. If we don't finish it all we don't finish it all but I'd rather have you ask your questions than cover things you are not interested in. So as we are going along don't hesitate to ask a question. If I'm not noticing you, wave a little more. I will say we will cover that in a short time and we will hold off until I get to that slide, but otherwise we will try to answer it as we are going along.

The Microlink opens up just a whole new world of hearing. It's a really small system, composed of a transmitter and a receiver that's very small. You can get larger receivers if you want, but primarily the small receiver that plugs into the hearing aid. It's designed to be used in several environments. Also it's easy to use. You are not carrying all these wires and different microphones around for different listening situations. It's all in one package. It's very flexible for meeting needs, carrying this bag I want to hook up a conference microphone to hear everyone around this table or suddenly I'm in a long table at a board meeting and the table is 20 feet long and I need to add more microphones down the table and such. This covers a lot of those situations.

>> (audience member:) Jay, would you make sure we understand when we are hearing about a category of item and when we are hearing about a specific product that that's the name of the thing we need to buy.

>> Right now we are talking about a category of current FM technology you have to add microphones to meet different listening needs. What we have is a transmitter hooked up to the PA system. So basically everything that's been transmitted out is being picked up buy the mikes. We eliminate the acoustics problem and the distance problem associated with it. As we are going along sometimes you don't have a PA system so you need to take your own PA system, build it set it up and meet the needs to be flexible. With this particular product we suddenly have a whole lot of flexibility in one thing without having to add a lot of different mikes to it from uni-directional mikes to omni-directional as you are going on you have it all built in the same thing with a simple flick of the switch you can change what you are doing with it.

>> (audience member:) What's the transmitting range for that?

>> About 100 feet. It's about the same as a standard FM portable transmitter.

>> (audience member:) Thank you.

>> (audience member:) So that's one product name? Microlink?

>> It's a product name.

>> (audience member:) Are there others like it?

>> (nods head)

>> (audience member:) Oh, and Jay, it probably would be helpful if you repeated the question so people can figure out --

>> I know that, and I never seem to do that. I need to keep working on it. We can use it in business settings. I have got one guy right now using it. He had a neuroma last year and lost all hearing in his left ear. He woke up one morning going from a mild sensory loss to a profound loss just overnight. He was on -- going to get a cochlear implant and suddenly some hearing came back, and now he has severe loss and is no longer a candidate at this time. But he is a business man, owns a large contracting company. He has to attend a lot of meetings. They do work for stores like Safeway, Fred Meyer, all the electrical for the coolers and the heaters and all this type of thing. He has to work in board meetings. He has to work on the floor. He was getting so frustrated because he couldn't understand anybody in any of those situations, that he thought he was going to have to retire at age 50.

He got fixed up with the Microlink, and I saw him here last week. He came into the office, and he says, you know, this thing is working so nice. He says -- I was at Hood River at the Fred Meyer store, and we had a meeting up in their board room over some changes they needed to do in the store, some remodeling, and he said they had that Microlink hooked up and it was picking up everybody talking around that board room in the omnidirectional. He said we went down on the floor in the store and we were going over how they were going to move the coolers and some special stuff they were pointing out and I put it on the zoom and I could hear everything that was being said on the floor; I didn't have a problem following them. He said then they took me out in the parking lot and they were showing me where they wanted to change the electrical coming into the building. They wanted to remount it and move it. And he said you know, the wind blows in the gorge pretty good, and he said normally it was impossible for me to hear out there. I put it in the super zoom position and I just pointed it at the person I wanted to hear. I could follow everything. I don't have to worry any more about under bidding or over bidding because I misunderstood what they wanted on the job. He said the nicest thing about it, for the first time in three years I can go to a restaurant with my wife and carry on a conversation with her in a restaurant that he has never been able to do in the last three years. So it's got some real practical applications.

Another good place it's good for is standard auditory in the classrooms. You can use it just like a standard FM system for the lecturer to be wearing it on a lavaliere or in this case it could just be put in the pocket. Easy and convenient to use. Use it in transportation. I have got people that use this thing when they are driving in a car, and they put it on the super zoom, hang it around the person's neck they want to listen to, and they are not picking up all the road noise. A lot of times with the standard FM systems we sell them with omnidirectional mikes, and it picks up all the room noise, auto noise, traffic noise and everything. Conversation is just as hard with the FM in the car as it is without it. When you can go to that directional mike technology, but when you try to order up individual directional mikes, they get expensive on good, high quality directional microphones. So this is why I say for normal technology you have to carry this little bag of different types of mikes to change how you are going to use it. With this it's all built into the one package.

Also for just noisy use in the store. You get up to the check-out stand at Fred Meyer's, Safeway, 5:30 at night with all the carts crashing and you take that and point it directly at the cashier in a zoom position or at your spouse if they are trying to say to you, "I need you to go over and get two gallons of milk" and you don't come back with cranberry juice. This helps in those situations. At the simple flip of a switch -- you are not worrying about any cords. Mobile listening devices walking down the street. Going to the technology, you can eliminate a lot of the street noise, environment noise, cocktail parties. The omni directional mikes have a tendency to pick up other things within five feet. With the directional all you are doing is picking up a cone of sound and picking up nothing else. You don't eliminate it entirely but rejecting a good part. When we go into the zoom or super zoom everything is cut by a third. Everything behind the microphone is cut by about two thirds is what they are averaging on it.

>> (audience member:) I'm just curious, would you be offering a demonstration during this time?

>> No, because, again, we have a problem with the channel I'm on is the same one that's in the other room over here, and we can offer it in the breaks between sessions, but not while sessions are going on because they don't want to listen to me. They might have heard me before, and that's why they are sitting over there. David?

>> (audience member:) So there are three different settings, omni, zoom, and super zoom?

>> Yeah, and we will go into those as we go along here

>> (audience member:) Would you repeat the question

>> He wanted to know how many settings are on the microphone and it's three different ones that we will be covering. In the handymic we are using radio technology and especially the new directional mike technology that's coming out. As you can see it's smaller than a cell phone, lightweight, easy to carry around. Easily adjustable with a flip of the switch. Can greatly reduce the background noise.

In the wide angle setting it picks up all the way around, 360 degrees, everything -- and you can just set it on a table like that. Everybody talking within about five to six feet it's going to pick up. Anything outside six feet it's going to start to dim down. In the zoom setting, what we are doing is we are going to about a 120-degree arc coming off the front of this unit here so everything out through here is going to be picked up, but everything beside me is cut by a third, everything behind me by two thirds. In the full forward position, you have got about a 30 degree arc coming out here. Now, what you need to remember, too, in that 30-degree arc, that expands out as it goes out further in distance. You can pick out at about 20 feet to 30 feet without a real problem, but the problem is when you are getting out there 20, 30 feet, you are getting a wider spread, so if there is another conversation over here they could be in that 30 degree arc. So, again, the closer you can get to the individual -- you know ideally between here and David, this second row works out well. The third row I can do pretty good. The fourth row back by the time I start getting that, if I'm pointing it at you, and you are talking to somebody, I'm going to pick you up too. So I get two conversations. So you still have that distance if nobody is talking over here, but over there I'm just going to pick up him is how it's working.

>> (audience member:) Will you refer to cost on all of these things

>> We will touch on cost a little when we get into the disadvantages of the system. (laughter)

>> That's one of the disadvantages. One of the nice things about this type of system is it's using direct audio input because the receiver snaps directly into the hearing aid that I'll be showing you in a minute so you don't have to worry about telecoil and picking up other EMF things like fluorescent lights, computer screens, anything like that -- generators, motors -- you won't be bothered by those types of sounds. The Microlink receiver just snaps on to the bottom of the hearing aid. This is a larger one for a larger hearing aid. They make them smaller, but it just snaps onto the bottom --

>> That connection would be audio input then so it could go with more than one hearing aid?

>> Yes, and we will cover that in just a minute, too.

>> On the bottom of the receiver there is a little switch, and you can flip that switch and just get the FM or you can flip the switch the other way, and you can have the FM and the microphone both live. That works out well if you are at a conference, you can use the microphone for near field pickup. You can set the microphone down, rather for far field pickup, at the other end of the table use your hearing aids for near field, and be able to work both of them, or if it's in a real noisy environment go directly to the FM and pick up off the microphone the person you are trying to listen to. The nice thing about this system with so many of the FM -- when the transmitter walks out of range suddenly you start getting this static coming through your FM system because you lost the carrier wave on the transmitter. This one has a circuit built into it so when it loses the wave from the transmitter that means when the person wearing the transmitter suddenly walks out that range it automatically mutes the FM receiver so you don't get any static. It quiets down. As soon as they come back in range it turns itself back on. If you have your hearing aid on FM only and the transmitter walks out of distance, it automatically switches your hearing aid over to microphone, and when the transmitter gets back in it automatically switches it back to FM and turns the microphone off. So it's doing this automatically for you as it's going through. Phonak came out with the Microlink here about four years ago. The interpreter: Phonak is spelled?

>> p-h-o-n-a-k. They developed and designed it -- they are really at the forefront of the directional mike technology. They are about four or five years ahead of all the other manufacturers right now. When they came out, it only worked on certain of their hearing aids. But since then they have worked with a lot of the other manufacturers, and the other manufacturers have made the audio boot that snaps on to the bottom of the hearing aid, and Phonak made just the receiver that will plug into that particular boot, and it's an MLX is the model number of the FM receiver that will plug in. You get the boot from the individual manufacturer of the hearing aids. Now, the thing is not all hearing aid manufacturers are building the boot, and those that are don't build them for all their models, so you need to check if you are interested in it with your dispenser to see if the boots are available. Some that are are Argosy, Danavox, Oticon, Resound. Almost all of the manufacturers and their digital aids outside of Starky and the Starky lines have the boot available.

>> (audience member:) Is this information in our hand-outs?

>> Yeah. So you can check with your manufacturer, but it will work real well with a lot of different manufacturers. The guy I was working with with the Microlink that I told you about -- he has Siemens digital aids that he was using with it. So you don't have to use the Phonak, and it's just come out here in about the last eight months that the manufacturers have started bringing out the boots for the other brands, and that makes it real nice for people so they don't have to replace their hearing aids.

>> (audience member:) So can you use that for wireless connections with Siemens insignia behind the hearing aids

>> Yeah. She wants to know if you can use it with your wireless connections. Siemens makes the boot. Phonak makes the little receiver that snaps on to the boot. And your connection is directly into the hearing aid through the contact boot contact on the bottom behind the ear

>> (audience member:) And that equips you to use it with the phonak system. You can't use it with, say, Solaris?

>> No. You'd have to have the boot that matches the coupler connection.

>> (audience member:) Does Siemens make a boot that works with the Solaris

>> I would think so

>> (audience member:) I have been told I can't I have two different boots and I can't go wireless

>> Hit the Siemens Direct and ask them. A lot of times the information they have got on their interconnecting equipment is buried so deep that a lot of the dispensers don't know about it. A lot of the reps don't talk about it. It's only when you got crazy guys around like me that are dealing in depth in technology that you really get into some of these connections that are available for other things

>> They also are coming out this spring with a transmitter and it's primarily -- they brought it out for home use that you can connect the television to and your phone to and the television and the phone will both transmit to the Microlink receiver. Or you request connect your stereo to it. So your television can be playing and as you are going along it's about an operating range of about 30 to 150. I want to talk to you just a minute about the band with, 207 to 217 Megahertz. I would be real leery right now of buying any equipment in that bandwidth. Right now the FCC is currently writing an opinion or looking for an opinion on selling that bandwidth off. They have -- a lot of people, SHHH and other organizations have written comments -- written to the FCC to retain that bandwidth for assistive listening devices. The cut-off period was supposed to be the 8th of April. It's been extended off to the 20th of April for comments to come in regarding it. But the problem is we only have two manufacturers that I know of that are building equipment currently on the n band, and your cellular companies want that bandwidth, and they have told them they are willing to pay them 10 billion dollars for that frequency bandwidth, and congress has ordered the FCC to sell off unused bandwidth. So I don't think it's looking real good for us. So if the cellular companies get it, any equipment that's operating up on that bandwith is going to become unusable. Because all you will do is pick up cellular calls. So kind of pay attention to what happens later this month at the FCC. If you haven't sent anything in to them regarding it, you might want to send them an e-mail or something saying, "please retain this for education use in the assistive listening devices." we desperately need it. We are running out of bandwidth. We will have better single strength and less problems. But the only way we are going to be able to keep it is if a lot of people send them information saying please retain it. But so far we haven't had enough people do it.

>> (audience member:) Do you happen to have the e-mail to contact them with?

>> No, but if you hit the national SHHH, self help for hard of hearing, will have a link to the e-mail site on the FCC. I tried to look through the FCC page and I couldn't find it, and I went over to the SHHH page and hot-linked directly to where I wanted to go. And some of the other national organizations also have links for it. Anyway, a little side trip. Compatible telephones. Any analog telephone and such -- what happens when this thing is used is you are watching television through the Microlink, and the telephone rings. You hear it in your hearing aid, and when you pick up the phone to use it, you hear the voice coming through the hearing aid FM system instead of through the telephone. Directly into your hearing aids, and it turns the TV off. The volume on the TV is automatically switched off while you are using the phone. Once you hang the phone up, the volume switches back on. Brand new thing. They are going to have it out. They couldn't get me pictures of it. It's supposed to be available in the spring. At the time I did these slides they hadn't set a price yet. They talked to me, I think it was Tuesday I got an e-mail from him, and he said the price on it is going to be $429 for that device.

Where it shines -- it's great in classrooms. Two small parts for people that don't want all the cords hanging around and everything else -- this works really nice. Small, inconspicuous. Great in workgroups where suddenly you walk into a meeting. You can set this on the table, pick it up, or if it's just two of you but you are in open cubicles with a lot of noise going on you can go to one of the directional modes to zoom down and pick up better and you are not asking the person to clip on this mike. Half the world, as soon as you stick a microphone in their face, two things happen. No. 1, part of them, their voice forgets how to work, and they forget how to talk when you stick a microphone in the face. The other half of the world starts looking around for the "60 minutes" camera. This is a lot more inconspicuous. It doesn't intimidate people as much.

All types of meetings it's great in. Lectures like this it works well if we didn't have the other assistive system going here. Great where mobility is needed where you are moving around a lot and you can't be stringing out cords and picking them up five minutes later moving them over again, and -- or if you have somebody like me who is always moving around. That's one reason I'm wearing the head boom mike because I hate to stand behind a microphone like this. It's just -- oh -- so I have got my own wireless microphone I use. Where cords and larger systems would be a detriment to either the work environment or a person's safety. In a lot of respects sometimes you can't -- working in certain areas you can't wear a bunch of cords that might catch on something, if you are working around power tools and such. So this eliminates a lot of this.

Where it doesn't. No. 1, price. It's expensive. You are going to be running somewhere between for the complete system -- which remember, since it connects into the hearing aid, you need two receivers. So each receiver is running just over a thousand a piece, and your transmitter is running just at a thousand. So you are talking around $3,000 for two receivers and the transmitter. That's a big detriment to the system.

>> (audience member:) What's their lifetime life? How long do they live?

>> She wants to know how long they are going to last. With proper care a long time. It's all solid state. There is not even a battery in this thing. This thing is going through -- and there is a little pin that comes up from the boot that connects up to the battery in your hearing aid and you run this thing off the battery in your hearing aid, and you don't even have to worry about the battery compartment or the batteries for it. What's going to wear is going to be the boot. Snapping it off and on all the time eventually the boot is going to break, but then you pop the receiver off. Get another boot. Transmitter itself, as long as you use it and take care of it and don't go swimming with it and things like that, it's going to last quite a while. What you need to worry about is the microphone port is getting dirty. And as we are coming along here that's one of the other problems, like on a industrial floor if you have a lot of dust and dirt floating around it can plug up the ports, and you will need to send it in to get it cleaned out or new mikes put in. So it's got a long, longevity if you take care of it well. But with a few repairs over the years with dirt and such especially if you work in a dirty environment. But otherwise I'd say 10, 12, 15 years you can use the system without a problem. Probably during that time -- it's got a rechargeable battery on the transmitter so you would have to send it in every two, three years to have a battery put in because the rechargeable batteries are not going to last forever. So you have some maintenance cost down there but that wouldn't be extremely high. David?

>> (audience member:) Two questions, one had to do with the battery life on your hearing aid using this equipment. I won't say obviously, but I assume it would drain more power.

>> David wants to know if you are using the hearing aid battery to use this are we draining more power? Yes, and you are going to shorten your battery life. Half the energy that's going to the battery, suddenly you are using that much more energy for the FM system so the time you are using for the FM system you will have to deduct that from the life.

>> (audience member:) The second was you mentioned snapping the boot on and off. What happens if you leave it on all the time

>> He wants to know if you leave the boot on the battery you can't open it up with the battery on

>> (audience member:) If it lasts two weeks for example, you would only be snapping it on every two weeks

>> You could leave it on for two weeks at a time. You don't have to take it off every time you take the hearing aid off. But the other thing you need to remember, too is over 12, 15 years every two weeks is still going to add up to a lot of snapping it on and off. So it's still going to -- you might extend it out some, but you are still going to have a problem. I have a question over here

>> (audience member:) Yes, I'm Dorothy. I'm curious. Are there any insurance plans to cover the cost of this equipment?

>> None that I have heard of so far that will cover the cost in the assistive technology. The only plan I know of is the Oregon Health Plan will buy one hearing aid or one assistive device and the only assistive device they recognize currently is a Williams Sound PocketTalker. Under their health plan. None of the other health plans that I know of that offer coverage for hearing aids will offer coverage on the assistive technology

>> (audience member:) I have a question like if you buy a car and you go off the lot and the value -- is that kind of the same? The technology is going so fast that you are saying that physically it can last 10, 12, 15 years, but technically can it last that long?

>> You know, I wouldn't think so. At the way our technology is advancing. She wants to know how long technology is going to last. You know, when I fit somebody with hearing aids, I like to see those hearing aids last them between five to six years. Now technically the hearing aids with a few repairs -- it's not unusual for the hearing aids to last 10, 15 years, too. But the thing is by five years, generally the hearing loss has progressed to such an extent and the technology has progressed that we can do a better job for the person with new equipment. And, you know, if this five years down the line we have something that's a lot better than this, but if this is still doing everything you need it to do, there is no sense changing. That's just like my clients with hearing aids. I have some of them that are wearing the same hearing aids for 12 years, but their hearing has stabilized, their living situation is such that they don't need the latest in technology and they would never see any advantages from it anyway. So you need to take that into consideration, too, when you are looking at lifespan. Just because it's new technology doesn't mean it's right for you, that you will get the advantages out of it

>> (audience member:) Going back to the insurance issue for a moment but from the standpoint of would VR pay for something like this?

>> Yes, they have. I have sold several of these systems through Voc Rehab. He wanted to know if VR would cover some of this type of thing. If it's in regards to letting them function in the workplace, you know

>> (audience member:) Yes, right.

>> VR will cover it without a question as long as -- you know, this is the right thing and something else wouldn't do just as good or better, you know. That's what you need to look at.

>> (audience member:) I'm curious. You said the two receivers and the one transmitter -- what about the boot? Is that also an additional cost?

>> Yes. The boot would be an additional cost. They are generally 30, 40 dollars through the manufacturer.

>> (audience member:) I wanted clarification on the transmitter frequencies.

>> These can be on any of the assistive listening band frequencies. We can put them on the 72 Megahurtz. Phonak liked to build these things up on the n band, but I'm leery of anything on the n band up there. Have been for about a year. So the ones I have sold have all been down on the 72 Megahurtz band. I'm just more comfortable right now until the FCC comes to a final determination, and I know that's going to be secure. It's gone, I don't want to sell people something that they are only going to get two years on and then are not going to be able to use because this is too expensive for that short a lifetime

>> (audience member:) I was wondering about the progression of technology. Many of my students in the school setting really prefer the most subtle so they will go with an in-the-ear or in the canal as deep or as hidden as it can get, and I'm wondering, obviously it wouldn't work for something like this because you need a boot, but is there a possibility of an integrated or a loop -- that's what I was going to ask.

>> We have the Microbox large receiver with the neck loop. If they have the telecoil built in we can couple in. The same way we have with the other technology they can wear this under their clothes. The transmitter is more discreet. But the problem is that with most of the completely-in- the-ear CICs, there is not room in the case for a decent telecoil. And there is no room on the base plate for a switch to be able to switch it off and on. So you can't couple, really, to those. The regular canal aids we can build them with the telecoils in and the switch, and they will work with those, but for somebody that's wearing the CICs, the tiny deep insert, basically assistive technology is not going to work for them if that's what they have got.

>> (audience member:) So the larger in the canal they can wear and then wear the loop underneath and then the transmitter can be in the pocket. It doesn't need to be like the old style

>> Right it can be in the pocket. Just drop it in your shirt pocket. I have one couple -- she has a very profound hearing loss. He is a diplomat, and they have to attend a lot of diplomatic functions as a couple, and her ability to follow a conversation even with well-fit hearing aids is just nil in that type of social type situation. He has this in his pocket, and he becomes a walking microphone. He just walks up next to the person that she wants to talk to or wants to talk to her, and he just stands with that side of him next to the person. They don't even know he is wearing a mike. She is wearing the receiver and picking up everything that is being said and very small, discreet type thing -- not a problem. Whereas, in a lot of these diplomatic functions, if you start pointing a microphone around at people, they are going to get real nervous, real quick. Before they got the system they had come to the conclusion that he was going to have to retire from his diplomatic position up in Canada. That she could not hear and carry on an intelligent conversation in those settings, and it was of prime importance that it was a husband/wife team; and, therefore, because of her hearing loss he was going to have to retire. With this system they are still out there. He is up in his '70s, she is in her late 60s, and they are going strong in the diplomatic field.

>> (audience member:) I'm concerned if you get a bunch of users together and everything falls apart. Can you talk about that.

>> Each system has to be on a separate channel. That's why I can't demonstrate this one because this one I've got here is on the same channel as the channel 1 over in the next room there on the corner. So we have that conflict, and this is where if it's in a school setting, somebody has got to be coordinating the frequencies being used by the students to make sure you don't have a couple students suddenly having the same channel in separate classrooms, and all it's going to do is trying to listen to a radio station where you are dialed in part way between the two stations. You get a little of each and you can understand neither. That's the same problem you are going to have so you have got to have some control over the frequencies being used.

>> (audience member:) How many different frequencies do you have on that?

>> On the narrow band we have about 42 down on the 72 to 75 megahurtz band. We are doing some things out. Comtech is working with synthesized frequencies and in the 72 to 75 frequent Megahertz they have divided it to a hundred channels. I have put a system in in Multnomah County -- 42 systems in one building with no interference between them. But right now the synthesizing takes a little bit larger package.

>> (audience member:) Why didn't that happen here? I'm not being critical but --

>> Because we didn't think to ask the people if they were bringing in demo equipment. I didn't even think of it. It's just one of those things. For years nobody has brought in demonstration equipment with FM so we haven't had any problems with these conferences and suddenly we have three different presenters, myself included, showing this, and even I didn't think to check frequencies. Very dirty environments the system won't work well in because it plugs up the directional mike and suddenly your directional mike technology is unusable. So you need to be careful there. Careless clients -- you know, if somebody doesn't care much about the system and such and they just are tossing it around -- you know, it's a piece of high-tech technology. It needs to be treated with a lot of care. You can't be tossing it back and forth between people and letting it drop on the ground, and we see people do this. You know -- oh, you want to use it? Here. And they toss it across the room and the other person is fumble fingered. They miss, sorry about that. It doesn't take that kind of abuse. It has a long life. It's well constructed, but you can't use it.

Environments where cords are not a problem -- a lot of times, you know, I'm always in this same room for meetings and it's just as easy to set the room up and leave it up and I walk in, switch a flip on the wall and a permanent system comes in. Why not bother setting this up. I can do the other for a lot less than I can do this. So you need to look at what are the options. This is nice but do they need all the flexibility this gives them or do they need to hear just in the one room? And a lot of the times they just use their hearing aids. What are their needs? Next one is classroom acoustical enhancement

>> (audience member:) Before you move on I'm from Vocational Rehabilitation and you gave a very definitive yes when somebody asked if Vocational Rehabilitation would pay for a system like this, and I just want to kind of say we evaluate the individual needs of the individual

>> It's on a need by need basis

>> (audience member:) There may be a situation where this would be appropriate and fit all the needs, but I would not give the impression to everyone that there is going to be a real definite yes that Vocational Rehabilitation would purchase a system like this

>> It's on a case-by-case basis. If this technology is right, there is not a problem, but if there is other technology that will do just as good a job or better for less money -- you know then you go with that. An example was -- I'm working on one right now through Voc Rehab, and a gal is having a problem hearing in a certain environment and the FM equipment would work well. This would work nice where she can point at the person and be able to pick them up and everything else, but it works just as well to take a piece of foam rubber and put it in the bottom of this bin that people drop things in that make all the noise. (laughter) so sometimes it's the low-tech that will do the best job. You have got to evaluate. Technology is wonderful. But in and of itself, is it? You know. That's what you need to look at. That's what I look at when I'm fitting hearing aids.

There is -- I think the digital hearing aids are the most fantastic thing out there, what I can do with them. But I'll tell you, most of my customers that come in for hearing aids -- they are never going to see the advantages of those digital properties. I can make a lot of money off of them, but they are not in the situations where they shine, where they are going to work great. And, therefore, why spend $7,000 for a set of hearing aids when I can put something on them for $2,000 that will do everything they want just as well and save them five grand. You know, you need to look at what you are trying to do.

Classroom. Sound field amplification. The better students can hear the better they learn. Study after study has come out with that. It doesn't matter if they are hard of hearing or hearing. We learn through our hearing. As we are coming across, 45 to 60 percent of the school day is involved in listening, not in talking, compared to when you get out in the normal workplace only about 20 percent of your day is involved in hearing for most people on the average. Okay. The barriers in a classroom that cause problems: internal and external classroom noise. Your classroom is here. We have got a busy street outside with the street traffic, buses, trucks going by. You have kids running up and down the hall. You have other kids shuffling in their room. That's going to cause a problem.

Reverberation. We are finding out that's causing a tremendous problem. By the time the sound goes out there in classrooms -- here we have windows all down one side. We have white boards, which are hard plastic surfaces around three walls of the room and the sound is just bouncing off of that stuff and all over and I get sound direct from the teacher here and a fraction of a second later I'm getting it off the back wall and a fraction a of a second later off the other wall and off the floor and off the desk top and it's like tremendous little echoes coming in, and it causes a deterioration in the ability to perceive clarity in what's being said and it's causing everybody -- not just the hard of hearing, although for a person that's hard of hearing, it just wipes them out totally with that reverberation.

And speaker to listener distance. -- when I'm speaking -- or not me -- not me -- I don't qualify, but a normal speaker with a normal voice three feet from them they are at about 50 decibels. Every time you double the distance from the speaker you drop 6 decibels. It doesn't take very long before you are down in the mid, low 30s, 30 is about a whisper. If I was talking like this -- this is about 30 decibels, and we could go on forever at this level here and you would have a real hard time hearing me if we just kept going like this. So those are the people at the back of the class are hearing the sound at a whisper. So that's just physics as we are going across.

Classrooms are horrible acoustic environments because of all the hard flat surfaces. We had one classroom -- no, I was looking at five classrooms over at Reed College. They called me in to do some consulting work over there. They said our students are having a horrible time in these classrooms and we need to figure out why. The acoustics in the classrooms were like a typical classroom. But also that was where the mechanical first came in the building. All the heating and air conditioning -- the vents came in -- that was the first rooms they hit and the air conditioner just roared through those rooms. Guess what rooms they were. They were their foreign language labs. (laughter)

So they had to go through and do some mechanical work with baffles and such in the air conditioning and heating system. Plus they were hanging some tapestries on the walls and such. They are getting some curtains to go over the top of the windows to act as some type of an acoustical buffer in there to cut down some of the reverberation, because reverb time was horrible and I mean the noise levels in the room with nobody in them with just the air conditioners running was over 60 decibels. It was tending to be louder than the teachers talking and they were wondering why teachers were getting sore throats from trying to talk over that.

What we want to do is enhance the learning environment. If you can't hear the instructor you are not going to pass the test. It's as simple as that. You are not going to get the knowledge to know how to function. So we want to bring in the teacher's voice better. Sound field amplification study after study after study show that they improve test scores, they improve knowledge acquisition for everybody. It's especially great in the primary grades and such where you have kids with a lot of Otitis Media, a lot of middle ear problems where they have fluctuating hearing loss going on all the time to help get that sound reinforcement. Studies have shown it improves academic achievement, improves speech recognition. Improves attendance and learning behaviors. You don't have so many people out there not paying attention and such. The kids aren't as tired so they come to class more often. Increased seating options for kids who are hard of hearing. They no longer have to sit in the very first row. If you have some Sound Field Amplification, they can go sit back where their friends are a little bit more. Maybe you don't want them sitting back where their friends are, but that's a different story.

>> (audience member:) When you are talking about kids, you are talking about elementary and high school and that. Who pays for that?

>> Okay. Schools pay for the amplification. What's going to happen is the government is going to come out and write regulations saying these classrooms must meet these standards, and if they don't, you won't get funding. That's going to be coming down the pike here in about two to three years. Standards are three quarters written right now.

>> (audience member:) So do like the parents have to pay for their part of the ear or whatever

>> No, Sound Field Amplification you don't have any other technology. We are just putting an amplifier with a speaker in the room. So you don't have that part. This is for helping everybody in the classroom. But it especially helps those that are more hard of hearing. Also it increases self esteem. The kids feel better about themselves because they are learning more. They don't feel like they are such a dummy because I didn't understand what the teacher wanted.

What do you need? You need a wireless microphone system. Generally a head-worn boom mike like this. Because we can pick the sound right up at the mouth and there is a less chance of other things blending in. Amplifier and mixer. You need the mixer because it isn't just the teacher's voice you want to pick up. Maybe you have a team teacher that comes in or a student that wants to give a report. You need a microphone for that. You need to hook up the VCR and the multimedia. We are going to all these other types of systems. So everything else needs to be funneled into it, not just these ones. Like yesterday when we screwed up again and the people had to hold up the microphone to the television in order to be heard because it wasn't going through the PA system. We forgot to let the people know everything needed to be jacked through the PA system. And then it goes through the assistive system. Everything needs to go through the system.

The comment was made today I don't need the microphone; everybody can hear me anyway. Well, most people can, but if it doesn't go through the system, the people wearing the assistive technology are left out. Everything needs to be plugged through the system. And you need to have those options when you are looking at it. Sound reasons? In all levels of our educational development, listening is the main channel of communication. It plays a significant role in all of our activities, whether it's educational, personal or work. That's why you are all here this weekend -- or this time -- is because people need assistance in the workplace, they need assistance in education which is what this conference is all about. They also need assistance on a personal basis, one-on-one socially and this technology can carry over to it. It's the main channel for learning. The more you can hear the better you learn. Our ability to speak, read, write, and master complex cognitive skills is directly and indirectly related to our ability to listen. If you can't hear what's going on or have some way of getting what's being said in the learning environment, you lose out on the rest of it. This is why it's so important for assistive technology, for assistive listening systems, for CART, for CAN, for C-Print, for the I-Communicator, for any of these other technologies that are coming across to help bring people that communication, because if it isn't there they fall behind, and they fall behind radically. A study done on unamplified classroom by giving them word recognition in the average classroom. Unamplified -- these are normal hearing students -- normal hearing. Got only 24 percent of what was said. When they put the sound field system in they got 92. And when they gave those same normal hearing students FM assistive listening devices they got 98. Dramatic changes.

Summary. Improved academic achievement. Increased attention to verbal instruction and activities. Also helps keep kids on point, on track more. If you have ADD those kind of students. Decreased frequency of need for verbal. Increased sentence recognition ability. Increased language growth. Reduced teacher voice strain. We are finding that's becoming more and more of a problem. We are seeing more and more teachers taking leave because their voice is stressed out and they can't talk. I just sold a Sound Field Amplification system to Portland Public Schools for the -- they didn't put it in for the students; they put it in for the teacher because otherwise she was going to have to retire because she couldn't talk over the room noise. Her voice had gotten so weak over the years that she was losing it. I like Sound Field Amplification in all classrooms. I think it helps everybody. All the way across. Every study I have been able to find and get involved in and such it really works out well.

>> (audience member:) Just to clarify, when you say Sound Field Amplification for classrooms, you are saying you have the teacher with a microphone and if you have an FM -- or if you have an aid you can put it to that frequency as well, right?

>> No

>> (audience member:) You are just talking about a speaker amplifying the sound.

>> This microphone I'm wearing here is up on the UHF commercial band so it will not be picked up by the assistive listening that's why we have the other transmitter here for the assistive listening. Also the fact you don't want it tied through this mike because this is only the teacher. You want them tied through everything. So if you turn the VCR on -- turn --

>> (audience member:) You can't do that all on one mike?

>> Not on one. That's why we go through a mixer with three other channels so we can have other inputs besides the teacher. I like the Teach Logic systems, the one I sell. I have had a lot of other systems over the years I have had the ability to sell other ones. I have turned them all down. Even though I know what the studies say I didn't like the equipment. I didn't like some of the things it was doing or for other reasons I just was not comfortable with it. I evaluated the Teach Logic, and another one came out. I said another one. I evaluated it. Really like the way it sounds. Functions. There are no forbidden areas. There were no areas a teacher could not walk into because of feedback. With this system there is no feedback problems. When it's set up right they can walk directly under the speaker.

The other thing is it's nice sound reinforcement. We don't want amplification, per se. We don't want the kids or anybody else to notice that it's amplified and beating down on them. What we want them to notice is just the sound reinforcement, a normal sound where it doesn't sound like they are being beat up on by voice. They are just hearing better. And this system does it. It comes in VHF, UHF, and infrared. I do not recommend and I will not sell if I can at all help it -- if you want to give me money, I'll take your money but I'll tell you right off the bat don't buy VHF because in about three years it will be unusable because of some interference problems, some things the FCC is doing that will cause interference on that band for VHF microphones. UHF works out well. It's what you find in all the performing arts centers they all use the UHF.

The latest technology that's coming out -- it will be the best -- is infrared. Where instead of a radio transmitter here I will have an infrared. I will have one up on my shoulder. It's line of sight. Best clarity. We will have it out in hand held wireless mikes for the same thing. You don't have to worry about channels. You can put one in each classroom and you don't have to worry about this classroom is on this one and this on the other it's all stopped by the walls. And you can take this mike that's being used this in classroom and walk over to that classroom and use it over there. So I like that type of equipment. You need to connect up at least two microphones, be able to connect the VCR and multi-media and the computer. Our modern classrooms we have more stuff coming in. Everything needs to be connected to the system. Everything. And, like I say, as much as I keep saying that, I even forgot the other day. So nobody has it down perfect yet, but we need to keep thinking about that.

The next one is computer aided interpreting where we are going with it. Hearing loss impact on education -- one of the biggest problems is vocabulary development for students. I don't care if they are in the primary grades, middle school, high school, or college level. Each has vocabulary for that level, and if a person is deaf or severely hard of hearing a lot of times they don't get that vocabulary in there. In California this is a big problem with them. They don't have standards for interpreters down there, and they take their best interpreters and they put them in the primary grades to help the child first learn the language development and such. But the problem they are running into is their high school interpreters aren't up to grade level on their vocabulary, and when a teacher says "infant" or "procrastination," they are signing "baby" and "wait." and when "infant" comes up they have "baby" on it and they are failing the exams.

That's where computer aided interpreting -- if you can't get -- we have a real shortage out there. Computer aided interpreting can help supplement by bringing in the language, the vocabulary that's needed. Grammatical skills, literacy development, concept attainment -- all leads to reduced problem solving skills, inability to interact with others, and then lack of social skills. Hearing loss and deafness cause all these problems. They are all things that can be overcome, but they need to be brought into it, and they need to start at an early age.

Short term impact. Graduate from high school with about a 2.8 to a 4th grade reading level currently. Most national studies say 4th grade reading level is what your high school graduate who is deaf has. I was just privy to a study done down in California with the California Board of Education, and currently in California their high school graduates that are deaf are graduating with a 2.8 grade reading level. They are really down there. Hard of hearing and deaf students don't progress at the same level. They only get about a third of a year for each year they put in is what the studies are showing. And right now in California between the ages of 8 and 19, their grade levels are only improving by one and a half grade levels in ten years. We need something to step in to help fill in some of what's there.

Long term impact, cost of educating students who are deaf or hard of hearing, to educate a regular student in the school system runs us about 9,000 a year. For a deaf or hard of hearing student it costs about $21,000 to mainstream them. Residential school runs around $39,000. It costs us about two and a half billion lost in wages each year. 35 percent of that to unemployment because the people just don't have the skills to get employed. 90 percent of it to underemployment. They can't get into a job that they are qualified for, and that's where Voc Rehab and a lot of the others are working now, showing, hey, you know, they are capable. They are not dumb. They can do things.

Luckily here in the Pacific Northwest we seem to have a higher grade level than most of the other places in the country. I think our residential schools, some of the other programs are away ahead of some of the other areas on educating our deaf and hard of hearing students. So we can take some pride in that, but they still aren't up to the levels for our normal hearing students, and that needs to be worked on.

Annual cost of lost productivity, special education, and medical care because of hearing loss -- about 5.6 billion a year it costs us by the time you figure in everything in there. That's a lot of money.

We have got a new tool, help in education and knowledge acquisition, and really when we talk about education -- that's what we are talking about is knowledge acquisition. How to get the knowledge, pick up the information. We are not training them as robots, but problem solving skills, and that's what our education is really all about is in that acquisition is all about. Help in language comprehension, vocabulary development and concept attainment. And assists in learning, sign language and reading is where computer aided interpreting can help.

What it does is it provides access to communication in most natural environments, helps improve skills in reading, vocabulary, speech, and language. The first person who started using this when they gave it to him a year ago in January, he was reading at a sixth grade reading level. Four months later he had gone up to a seventh grade reading level in four months time. Now, he is high-functional deaf. So that needs to be taken into consideration. He is also highly motivated and such. Those things need to be taken into consideration. That won't happen with everybody.

Builds self-confidence and enables independence a lot of the time. One of the things we do is we work with these kids from the time they come into the kindergarten, and they work with an interpreter all the way through high school, and they graduate from high school and suddenly they are out there on their own. They no longer have that interpreter standing at their shoulder helping them through or the deaf educator or everybody else they have learned to depend on is no longer there, and in one of the seminars yesterday, I think it was, they were talking about when you go into college, you have got nobody coming up to the student saying, "what do you need?" Instead, the student has to go to them and say, "this is the accommodation I need." It suddenly falls on the student, and how often do we train the student into that mode? Instead we primarily enable him in his dependency on the interpreter, on the deaf educator, all the way through the school. He never learns how to go out and advocate for himself. Until he is out on his own. And then it's almost too late.

Ensures privacy and confidentiality in certain situations. There are times that maybe the student doesn't want an interpreter there. Maybe they are going in for a disciplinary problem and they are embarrassed. Or for health reasons and they are embarrassed, and they don't want anybody else there. Computer aided interpreting provides them with that confidentiality they need. It's also being used in certain areas in the workplace for security settings, where maybe you are working in a government job or more a defense contractor in a certain area and to get a promotion you need a certain security clearance, but then when you get in there, trying to find an interpreter with the security clearance to be there, you can't do it on a day or two's notice. You know, again, that gives you this bridge to be able to use in that type of situation. Or like we have one situation here in Portland right now where we are putting one out. The guy has just been promoted to a design engineer in a computer company. And it's a security position. They are designing the next generation computer chip, and the company does not want interpreters coming in. The only people they want privy to the information is the design team. So they are going to use computer-aided interpreting in that regards.

And the I-Communicator -- I was showing it yesterday, is where we are doing some of this, designed to enhance the learning environment, translate speech into three streams of data. The first one is textual. What is beings said is thrown up as text on the screen. The second one is visual form. The text is being converted and video files are being matched to the text for sign language for the person, and, finally, an audible form through a computer generated voice coming back to the individual that filters out all the background noise, and you can filter the voice to give them the most speech clues. You can slow it down, change the pitch and everything else to match their particular hearing needs, and, with that, I think I'm going to have to come to a close here because I've already gone over and I knew I had too much.

This stuff requires high-end equipment as far as the computer goes. The very latest state of the art is what you need. You have special features, if you want to know more about it see me afterwards. I'd be able to answer any questions for you. You have our name and such there. There is learning time involved for the voice recognition. Approximately one hour for the first on it. Four to 10 hours depending upon voice consistency for the computer to learn each voice the best. Beyond that you can do some things to shorten training time. A lot of the textbooks now are on CD-ROM. The publishers of the textbooks are putting that out. It can be scanned into the program and just those words it doesn't recognize pulled out.

It works well for lecture classes, low auditory classes where grade appropriate interpreters are unavailable for the vocabulary being taught. When the student refuses to work with or ignores the interpreter, will look everywhere else but at the interpreter, where you they don't want the FM systems or an interpreter and you set a notebook computer on their desk -- and that's cool. They don't mind that. Work environments -- a lot of times with a limited number of people to interact with or where security is a concern.

Where it doesn't work well is interactive classrooms, more than one speaker, highly mobile classes where you are moving around a lot and everything. Where you've got team or multiple teachers in use. Again, multiple speaker situation, and where the individual has a low reading level. You know you have got to have at least a third grade reading level or someplace close to it to be able to use this type of thing. Otherwise it's just a high-technology piece of junk. Where the individual has low interest in assistance. We are talking too much money to put this on somebody that doesn't give a darn. And they probably wouldn't use it anyway if they don't give a darn. Work environments, multiple talkers, unknown speakers they need to communicate with. It doesn't work well.

Pricing you are about 82, 8300 dollars for the basic system, complete with the computer and everything. You can get hold of me later. You have got the prices in there. That's basically it, and I am ten minutes over, and I'm sorry. (applause)