11. March 2011 by Cape Cod Chapter HLAA Blog.

Saturday, March 26, 2011 : “Advanced Hearing Aid Technology & Connectivity”

Tiffany Pfleger and Leanne O’Neil, licensed audiologists and Co-owners of Advanced Audiology Associates of Mashpee and East Dennis showed a slide program and discussed how technological advances in hearing aids can reduce background noise and connect to televisions and other blue-tooth devices.

 Special Guests:
Moira Hennessey, MassRelay Community Relations Manager
“Making Telephone Communication Possible for Individuals with Hearing Loss and Speech Difficulties”–Relay, Captioned phones and more.She demonstrated the CapTel phone and explained how to obtain one..
June Barrett, Deaf and Hard of Hearing Advocate at CORD   introduced herself and described the help available through CORD for those with hearing impairments and other needs.

View or download March Newsletter — “Cape Ears”.

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16. January 2011 by Cape Cod Chapter HLAA Blog.

“Going to the Dogs”   January 29, 2011,

Today’s meeting was fascinating.   Sandy Luppi, Manager of the Brewster Branch of the Animal Rescue League of Boston described the work done at the shelter — adoptions, foster programs, rescues of animals in trouble and educational outreach and tours. Animal Rescue League is a private/non-profit humane society on Route 6A in Brewster which handled over 1300 animals in 2010. Dog trainer and shelter volunteer Donna Iovanni described her success with clicker training to quickly train dogs. The one click and a treat reinforces positive behavior without the extra words we use which confuse dogs. Susan Sheehan and Jim Fitzgerald described clicker training success with their own dogs, alerting them to sounds like phones ringing.

Watch this space for complete details on the meeting. Check out the hearing dogs page on the left top menu.

Next meeting– March 26th.  We meet at Dennis Public Library, 5 Hall Street, Dennisport

www.dennispubliclibrary.org  The meeting room has an audio loop and CART (real time translation). Use your hearing aid telecoil or request headphones.

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7. March 2010 by Cape Cod Chapter HLAA Blog.

– Here’s some information from another HLA member about You Tube captions.  It’s a great start, though if you are NOT hearing impaired, you should look at Sandra Bullock’s Oscar acceptance speech to see why captioning by human beings is better than voice recognition captioning.  As Dana said, it can be funny, unless you really want to know what someone is saying.  –

As I hope most everyone knows, YouTube recently started providing
automatic transcription/captioning for all new videos uploaded to
YouTube.

I just did a search for a new video to doublecheck on how to make the
captions appear.  It turns out that there are a couple of steps to
take to turn the automatic captioning on for the first time, and that
merely seeing the “CC” with a red background on the bottom of the
video isn’t enough to see captions now.

For example, go to:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QtZLvFrl6qk&feature=aso

Click on the “CC” on the bottom part of the video and wait for the
menu to pop up.

Click on “Transcribe Audio (Beta)” at the top.  This turns on the automatic
transcription/captioning which is done for new videos. (Most older
videos won’t have that feature enabled yet.)

After activating the automatic captioning, one can then choose to change
the caption settings (the font and the size of the captions)  and
one’s account settings (if you don’t have an account on YouTube, it’s
helpful to set one up so you can set captioning preferences, save your
favorites, create playlists, etc.).  I just changed my YouTube account
settings so that automatic captioning is always activated.

The captioning is pretty cool!

Note that the automatic captioning will invariably have errors in it
if the owner of the video hasn’t corrected it. Some of the captioning
will probably be funny when it hasn’t been corrected yet.  <g>

Dana

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22. February 2010 by Cape Cod Chapter HLAA Blog.

Sometimes we take our hearing aids for granted and forget what it’s like without them.  Here are some actual stories we’ve heard lately to get you thinking about what would happen if you were in a situation without your hearing aids.  How can you let people know how much you need them (other than tattooing  “please face me, I lipread” on your forehead.)

–Before an MRI, your hearing aids are taken away.  Then the attendant talks to you through a microphone when you are inside the machine and you have no idea what he’s saying.

–You are about to have minor surgery.  You wait in the pre-op room for over an hour and don’t get taken.  You discover they have called your name and you didn’t hear them, so they thought you went home.

–You collapse at home (without your hearing aids on) and the rescue squad comes to get you.  They decide that you have Alzheimer’s because you don’t respond to their questioning while their backs are turned.   Luckily your family arrives and asks where your hearing aids are.

You will have to do some advanced planning to avoid these situations, but what to do?

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