Assistve Technology for the Deaf

One disability that is covered under IDEA is deafness. Students who are deaf are born with impaired hearing, this can range from not being able to hear at all to barely being able to hear. This clearly puts students at a disadvantage when it comes to learning because if they can understand what the teacher is saying how are they supposed to know what is going on in the class? One of the biggest struggle for a deaf student is keeping up with the rest of the class. Hearing students can understand the teacher, talk to others, ask for help, and interact with almost anyone. A deaf student however would struggle with all of these things in a hearing dominant school. They would have to go at a slower pace than the hearing students or at least get one on one help. I am going to talk about two assistive technology I believe benefit the deaf.

One AT designed to help deaf students and deaf people everywhere is the hearing aid. When people think about devices for the deaf the hearing aid is the first thing that comes to mind. Hearing aids are electronic devices put in the ears of a deaf person to help them hear sounds better. This helps students hear the teacher and other students. It also helps them partake in everyday class activities. According to the National Institute On Deafness and Other Communication Disorders the way a hearing aid works is it, "magnifies sound vibrations entering the ear (Hearing Aids)." This makes it easier for students to hear the sounds around them. Hearing aids can cost anywhere between $25-$2,000. To find more information on hearing aids please go to this website, http://www.nidcd.nih.gov/health/hearing/pages/hearingaid.aspx. This is one of the best, if not the best, AT for deaf students.

Another AT designed to help deaf students is the C-print. The C-print is a tool used to change speech into text for deaf people to be able to understand what others are saying. According to the National Technical Institute for the Deaf, a college of Rochester Institute of Technology, "the system successfully is being used to provide communication access to individuals who are deaf or hard of hearing in many programs around the country (What Is C-Print)." The C-print can be used on computers and laptops. While people are taking their words appear on the screen of the computer or laptop. This piece of technology helps students learn because they know what is being said in the class by looking at the text this device provides them. Like the hearing aid it helps them keep up with the class by understanding what people are saying. The cost of the C-print varies depending on a number of things like; the equipment used, the demand of the product, and more. To find more information about the C-print please go to this website, http://www.rit.edu/ntid/cprint/.The C-print may not be as well know as the hearing aid but it is just as helpful.

I can see the future for both of these AT's being very bright. I didn't see any information on future developments but there are a number of ways they can make both of these AT's even better in the future. I believe the hearing aid can be advanced by making be usable at farther distances. Many hearing aids only work within a certain range of space and none of which are very big. I believe that increasing that area in which one can hear while using a hearing aid is possible and would be extremely helpful. For the C-print I think an easy and helpful adjustment would be to make it so the deaf person could type and the program would speak for them. There are many apps nowadays that do that which is why I think it'd be easy to attach that feature onto the C-print. It would also help a lot with communication because not only could the deaf person understand hearing people, hearing people could understand the deaf person. I think these are just a few things that could be done to these AT's in the future to make them even better.

Work Cited

"What Is C-Print." C-print. National Technical Institute for the Deaf. Web.

"Hearing Aids." Hearing Aids. National Institute On Deafness and Other Communication Disorders. Web.