and I see people joining us welcome we're just a minute or two before noon so we're g to just let folks come on in and get started and we'll we'll start in just a second all right well it's noon um so I'm going to go ahead and get started welcome everyone to today's webinar um Technologies to enhance Effectiveness it's part of a uh series of webinar ARS put on by the task force related to hearing loss at work and we're going to go ahead and get started and I'm G to just run my name is Melissa Cr
uz and I'm with hll and I'm just going to run through some tech tips with you as we go um this is the webinar is being um is being captioned and to see captions you're going to need to click on the icon and click show show subtitles um you will be able to change the font size in the caption setting uh please use the chat for technical support issues only our team will also be sharing information and links here you can also click on the close the Q&A icon to submit questions as we go through the
webinar and we will be answering questions um your screen should be in side bys side mode if you've joined by the computer um you can adjust the side by side view by hovering between the Shar screen um and panelist view to slide to adjust to your desired view if you've joined by mobile device or phone your view may be slightly different and you may have to scroll between the views to get to the desired one um and just a little disclaimer that HLA does not endorse any products or um anything that
's featured in this webinar it is provide we are providing this um webinar as an educational opportunity to learn about products and things that are out there that could be beneficial for hearing loss and now I'm going to go ahead and turn it over to our moderator Jill harbart um Jill will be uh leading the rest of the webinar thank you super thank you Melissa and hello hello everyone and thank you for joining us so much uh we're glad that you're here and hope you you will find this webinar very
useful um we're going to talk about uh technology in the workplace for people with hearing loss um the hearing loss Association of America's mission is to open the world of communication to people with hearing loss through information education support and advocacy this includes in the workplace now this webinar is hosted by the task force here that h laa task force for accessible inclusive employment the full task force is shown on this side we've got nine really dedicated um amazing individua
ls that help us out with different webinars and other activities that we have during the year and our goal is to help people with hearing loss their employers and allies towards more accessible and inclusive workplaces and employment opportunities we're also looking towards uh increased career satisfaction and success in your careers please feel free to reach out to myself or any of the task force members if you have questions comments or suggestions next slide please okay um my name is Jill her
bl and I the moderator for the webinar today I'm a healthcare Consulting actuary who primarily works with State Medicaid agencies I'm also a managing partner of a Consulting practice with over 200 employees my hearing loss progressed from mild to profound over many years and I'm now a clear implant recipient I've been a member of HLA for over 20 years and on the task force for about a year now before I introduce the panelists I wanted to thank you U for the questions that you all submitted in ad
vance um we'll try to address as many of those questions as possible reviewing the questions uh for me was a good reminder that there are many different disabilities and great diversity among those with caring loss there's also a huge variation in jobs and tasks um in work context so we cannot cover everybody's specific situation and needs today um but we hope to share information that will help as many attendees as possible with that in mind our Focus today is on technology um for um we're not
talking about the law um accommodation type of a thing um it's for adults not for children um we are focused on hearing loss and we're focused on work settings um so we will be sharing resources as we go we've got a couple different slides um that you'll see there as we go and I'm hopeful that the examples that we're sharing today will be helpful for most attendees um but I will say that even though we are focused on adults in the workplace um there's a lot of what we'll be talking about that ca
n be applicable to other situations um people with other disabilities and non-work context as well so we have about 300 people already joining us today um I'm very glad that you're here um before we get started um with the panelist and I introduced those we wanted to take a few minutes to get to know all of you um and so we have a poll um so Melissa can you start the poll with us please okay um hopefully you can see the poll on your screen now um the first question that we have is where do you w
ork um and we've got five different choices there U if you could please select the one that suits your environment bus that would be great okay and I can also see that the second question is there as well um and that is which assisted technology devices do you find essential to your own inclusion and productivity on your job well it looks like we have a wide variety um in attendees today although um in terms of where we work um office seem to be the most prevalent but I'm sure that includes peop
le that work from home um and an office like setting um so uh and not surprisingly um I think that's where a lot of um people work um School Educational class settings as well as Hospital goals and medical facilities um we've also had some attendees from there so thank you for joining us in terms of Technology um hearing a cocar implants um certainly it makes sense that those are some of the most essential of the um tools that we have um to help us perform and included um in productivity in the
work and uh captioning uh which we are currently captioning uh this series um is uh really helpful um and we'll be talking more about that as uh we go along today okay so with that let me go ahead say well let me go ahead and introduce our panelists we can get on to the main content of our program today our first speaker will be Dr David Baldridge he is Professor of management and organizational behavior at Oregon State University he is a deafened clear implant user and chair of the task force t
hat's sponsoring this webinar today he has researched the workplace experiences of people with hearing loss for over 25 years he's published more than 25 articles and book chapters and made over over 100 conference and workshop presentations internationally our second presenter today will be Dave develop Dave is a practicing engineer with HP Incorporated he works in the company's industrial printing division he had sudden and profound hearing loss at age 55 and that threatened to derail his care
er but with the help of a hearing aid and a clear implant he has been able to continue to work effectively in his role David also member of our past force and finally our third speaker will be Dr Tina chis she's an educational audiologist in the mainstream and residential school settings she's also a technology and social media ficado late Sten adult who is fluid in American Sign Language and a bilateral Co clear imp plant recipient with her unique perspective and passion for sharing information
through social media um she s out International presenter and motivational speaker for families adults and professionals on a variety of topics her area of expertise includes hearing assistance pestology uh application cocar implants advocacy and effective strategies for coping with hearing loss so I think we have a great panel today and I hope that you enjoy the different presentations and all the information that they're going to be sharing so with that I'll turn it over to Dr Bob hello every
one thank you for being here today again my name is David Baldridge I'm a professor at Oregon State University and I am not like a super high-tech person um I am an applied psychologist by training so but I hope that my experiences as kind of a medium technology user will uh will help a lot of people here I will kind of sort us out and Dave and Tina will go Progressive ly deeper into different Technologies so with the polls I was impressed by uh how how much technology audience members are curre
ntly using some of the same technologies that I find useful so for context I spend um a lot of time teaching that's kind of half of my job and I spent a lot of time researching that's another half of my job for uh the classroom I teach remotely as well as in person and the remote teaching is an example of career or job crafting in order to uh kind of focus on my strengths and have things that are not uh such strings kind of fall in the background so when I teach online it's really not um evident
to anyone that I have hearing loss all the uh communication is via email or the equivalent uh chat boards and so forth when I do uh teach in the classroom I use captioning sometimes um but not always and I'll talk about that more in a second uh for meetings which is another big part of my job I uh use zoom as much as possible because it combines captioning with being able to see speakers and being able to stream in via Bluetooth into my cokur implants so our main through questions for all the p
anelists today are are must have Technologies and Technologies we're excited about for the future emerging Technologies and then the last part are the resources that we use and sometimes there are different resources that I um suggest for people who are um newer in their Journey with hearing loss so my own experience kind of shows different levels of hearing loss so I first became or I first had uh acquired hearing loss in preschool or before so Way Way Back back and my hearing changeed very slo
wly over time so mild moderate profound total then about 20 years ago or 22 years ago I got my first Coker implant and then a second one about 10 years later is it was covered by insurance and with the COK implants as their technology has changed you think about how much a cell phone has changed in the past 20 years right from a giant brick that didn't work very well well implants have been through that same Evolution so I feel like I'm kind of reversing that process from Total to profound to mi
ld to moderate so in most situations now with my cooker implants I feel like I have a very mild hearing loss in noisy situations it's more you know moderate to profound and of course if my batteries run out then it's total right so I share that because I've had that whole experience of um different l levels of hearing loss and then through my research I've had in-depth interviews with dozens of people with hearing loss and uh survey thousands more people about their experiences with accommodatio
n technology and Career Success and part of that is um using technology but also engaging what I talked about with career and job crafting to make sure that you're using technology to supplement um but you're not overly uh dependent upon it so you can make changes in your job to leverage your strengths and minimize the impact of your hearing loss okay so for me the different phases of my hearing loss and technology so pre- coer implant I had very powerful hearing aids that basically towards the
end of that time allowed me to follow the pattern of speech and made it easier for me to speechread but I couldn't just listen and understand what was being said so at that point I was very dependent on uh on captioning so cart reporting in the classroom and in meetings I also used email and text message messaging to use technology that everyone uses to Aid my communication later um as I got my first Coker implant again a series of changes but big changes then were with the Coker implants and ti
me that t- might over my ear allowed me to use a telephone fairly well uh much better than I could use it before and at that point different remote microphones are very important so this is a Roger pen you can point and zoom in on the person or whatever you're trying to hear this is a more modern version of the same thing and these are clipon microphones so for example my wife with a soft voice in a restaurant wearing this on her shirt would allow me to hear her much much better so most recent u
m generation of technology for me would be I upgraded to the advanced B bionic naita Marvel and it has a couple of really great features and that's just my product so um the other manufacturers have their own variations of these same uh same things but for Advance bonics um they have something called Auto sense and auto sense helps greatly in hearing in noise so it focuses on what's in front of you in loud situations and it tries to filter out and give you better quality sound so for me personal
ly I don't use remote microphones as much anymore because the auto sense just works so well the other big um Revolution from for me personally is the Bluetooth um that's built in to the most recent cokr implant processors so I now stream directly from my iPhone from my iPad from my computer it's what I'm doing right now into my Coker implants and experiences vary but for me it's the highest quality sound I've had since probably early childhood so I find when I watch a moving on my iPad I don't n
ecessarily need the optioning it's nice to have but I don't rely rely on it as much anymore um so the Bluetooth streaming and the auto sense are huge recent Evolutions that have changed how I use my C implants uh also I Rely more on AI captioning now because it's so fast and because it's now a secondary source of information so as I am listening as I am watching people's lips or faces on the screen I can use that AI caption name because it is so fast emerging Technologies so like everyone else I
'm watching AI dreading it sometimes as a teacher but as a person with hearing loss I think that it's going to help us a lot in the future uh in particular with a captioning continuing to improve also the ability to use our um our cell phones not just individually but paired I think Tina may talk more about that um but our phones are these incredibly powerful computers that we can leverage more in the future and the last I'll mention is glasses so at the convention last year for hlaa had a chanc
e to try you know the caption glasses and to be honest right now they're pretty clunky right now but again so is my cell phone you know 15 years ago so I'm hopeful at some point in the future we'll be able to read captioning fairly seamlessly on our glasses or whatever else for resources for me personally um the Alda con and the HLA convention are uh places I go to every year in order to meet vendors try technology touch it test it out and most importantly I've made friends they doing similar wo
rk that I can call upon when I need help with resources so those are the things that I Rely Upon uh most the conventions for meeting people and then staying in touch with those people that like technology more than I do last thing I'll mention is for people who are new to hearing R in the workplace I always recommend Jan the job accommodation Network because their job is to help you and help your employer find the right accommodations for your situation so you can can uh suggest that you supervi
se or HR contact them you can do so yourself and they'll help you through that process of uh navigating the legal elements as well as finding the right technology I do think that sometimes are a little behind in the most cuttingedge technology so that's what I allow my friends for so with that I will turn it over to Dave gellis thanks David yeah my name is Dave gellis and uh I've been hearing impaired severely hearing impaired now for about 10 years and but in truth uh I've actually been hearing
impaired most of my life uh as a young child I lost Hearing in my left ear but I was never really treated as disabled and I never really acknowledged myself as disabled um you know I couldn't tell which direction sounds were coming from I couldn't understand why everybody thought stereo was so great and uh you know I really had a hard time at parties and conferences and restaurants but I thought you know I wasn't really unique in this regard you know it was it was like the old joke about you kn
ow asking a fish how's the water and the fish asking back what water so you know I really thought I was normal but um about 10 years ago when I turned 55 uh that really changed suddenly uh for for reasons unknown the hearing in my good right ear cut out suddenly uh and completely and didn't come back uh so I went from what I considered normal to basically completely deaf in that period And so this went on for about a half a year until uh I was able to get implanted with a CLE device in in my rig
ht ear uh during that period of isolation and it was really um isolating I continued at work I relied on cart service that my employer a HP provided um as well as email and instant messaging uh but really what I relied on to a large extent was the awareness and the help of people that I worked with during that period uh now with the clear implant and also a hearing aid in my left ear which turned out to have some residual hearing I'm pretty much back to where I was before uh before all this went
down you know I still have all the same difficulties that I did uh and that most of us on this webinar share but uh even in the decade that I've relied on this absolutely wonderful technology it's really Advanced marketly and um so I'd like to share with you some of my experiences in this regard but let me first describe the work environment that I function within as an engineer I spend the bulk of my time in a quiet office environment and actually you know here post pandemic it's actually got
quieter just because because at any given time half the people aren't in the office but are working remotely um our product is a large multi-million dollar industrial printing presses uh that we sell to customers internationally and a large part of my job is doing test and development work on these devices that are both dangerous and Extremely Loud when in operation so so much so that normal hearing people are compelled to wearing uh hearing protection uh around these devices when they're workin
g with them and I also uh periodically uh visit customer sites in various countries where besides just the noise the challenge is understanding different languages and different accents as far as the uh office is concerned I'd say the changes wrough by the pandemic have actually been very beneficial you know the large in-person meetings that were so problematic before are now kind of a rarity most of the meetings are conducted over Zoom or teams just like we're doing now uh having uh as David me
ntioned assist of devices that have integrated Bluetooth uh allows a direct audio tie in via the computer and kind of avoiding a lot of the the understanding losses that occur when you're dealing with microphones and speakers um also the meetings themselves uh have changed character you know once made you know there were lots of side conversations and people talking over each other uh now with remote meetings that's much less of an issue because the format really does encourage only one person s
peaking at a time and with the video there's the added benefit of being able to see the person's facial expressions and be able to read their lips um and then as David mentioned also just the AI captioning capabilities have really been improving all the time uh there's 's always going to be a delay there's always going to be transcription errors uh but as an aid to following what's going on in the meeting it's really invaluable and especially in my case you know if that meeting involves overseas
personnel which it often does where English is maybe a second or even a third language uh it's very beneficial working around the presses was a huge problem at first um you know think of the loudest meeting in the worst conditions you've ever experienced and multiply it by like three uh in this environment the biggest benefit for me has been uh left right side devices with integrated Bluetooth that can direct the focus in front and and this is so much of a benefit that in fact in a lot of cases
I'm at an advantage to my normal hearing colleagues because they have protective hearing devices on and can't really uh hear very well and and so so that's been a real benefit for me in this kind of unique industrial environment it's still the case though that even though the sound in front is very good um what's coming at you from the sides or from the rear uh is deliberately blocked out and so in that case I have to really tell everybody ahead of time that if you if you try to get my attentio
n and and I'm not directed completely at you I'm probably not going to hear you so so once again even though the technology is really good it has its limitations and you have to kind of bridge those limitations with the help of the people that you're working with um I rely on on reading lips and facial expressions I have to remind them of that and also sometimes it just gets to be so contentious that I suggest that we go somewhere where it isn't quite as noisy if the if the conversation really i
s important demands that we we we hear everything that people are being said um I also think as far as technology goes in general some of it is uh undeniably beneficial to our situation but a lot of it also has limited value or not the same value depending on the situation and the person and so since in many cases it's very expensive and also not covered by insurance it's really important to try to gauge ahead of time whether it's going to be of benefit to you and I found the best way to do this
is to find and talk with people that actually have experience with the technology and uh if possible to range a free return trial to judge for yourself whether the price is you know you know the benefit is worth the price asked um you know but that said I'm very enthusiastic about the new technologies that are on thead Horizon as I've already mentioned you know the integrated Bluetooth and the zoom forward feature have been absolute game changers and if um your current assisted devices don't ha
ve these I'd seriously consider upgrading to get them because they really have been um fantastic and uh as Dave I think Dave mentioned you know the the Bluetooth technology is poised to even better with something called arcast um you can think of arcast as the ability to D irly tie your Bluetooth device into audio that's being broadcast uh in any kind of venue and so just one example where this could be a game changer is in airports when I travel when I go overseas to support customers and I'm a
t the gate and the gate agent makes some announcement over a crappy intercom system with all kinds of noise going on there's no way I'm going to be able to understand that and I always have to ask the person standing next to me what was just said now with orac cast in that situation you'll be able to get that announcement directly into your device and uh and really improve your understanding and I can see the same technology really having benefits and any kind of contentious environment such as
a large conference um large meetings and also privately in like movie theaters and just listening to your TV could be really nice um and the other emerging technology of course is one that everybody's been talking about which is AI and uh I think it's its capabilities for near realtime translation are already pretty good rivaling cart and they're going to get even better in the future and of course it's free um there's a lot of talk these days about the dangers of AI but I think uh you know for
those of us with hearing loss it will prove to be an unalo benefit and so with that um I'd like to turn the floor over to our final speaker Tina Childress thank you Dave good afternoon everyone I'm really excited to be here um if you don't know who I am I am a late defant adult um as mentioned in my bio I am also active um on various boards and committees I I'm not going to name them all but I have a passion for helping people and I think a lot of that stems from my background in Audiology and I
I say that Audiology picked me um because I had no idea that I would become deaf nine months into my career uh I had a rapidly Progressive hearing loss and lost all my hearing in about nine months was functionally deff for about nine months and then got my first clear implant in 2000 and I became bilateral in 2005 so I think um Professor Baldridge when I think about your timing I think we're about the same and people ask me well why didn't you go bilateral you know the first time and I have to
say people weren't going bilateral until 2005 so um you know technology like you said has changed so much when I was in school we didn't have Wi-Fi we barely you know had computers that um Bluetooth I mean I know audiologists right now they almost feel like they should be working for the Geek Squad um for Best Buy for as much time as they spend with patients helping them understand Bluetooth and their phones and things like that so this topic is rapidly changing but it's also something that I re
ally love and I'm always happy to stay on top of it as much as I can um as well as share information I feel a little bit like a bridge between the professionals and the consumers um you know if I'm talking to professionals I'm always like hey this is what we people that are Duffer heart of hearing are feeling then what I'm talking to Consumers I'm like this is what all this jargon means because it's confusing even for audiologists so um those are things that I love to do I do have a website um w
here I list a lot of my resources I like to make lists and spreadsheets of things so that you can look at different products and you look at different features and see if it's something that's helpful for you so um Michael if you don't mind posting that um that would be great um my must have technology so I was listening um very hard to Baldridge and dellas to see what other things that I could contribute so I agree my Advanced Bionics clear implants are for sure like that first layer um it give
s me access to sound in a variety of different ways um you know some of you may be asking yourselves well I'm a candidate for cure implants or I'm a candidate for getting hearing aids which one is best and there really is no answer it's like saying what's the best card there's so many choices it depends on your lifestyle you know some people pick clear implants for the technology sometimes they pick it because they like the way that it looks and so everyone has different priorities and just know
that you you really can't go wrong all of the clear implants and and hearing a companies have people that do very well um but not everybody is the same in terms of their auditory functioning so instead of saying well why can't I do like that person is doing you might look at your technology and say wow I've really come a long way since before I got technology okay so I just I kind of wanted to put that out there um other things that are a must have for me would be I don't go anywhere without my
phone um and probably as a corollary to that would be my watch um on my phone I have the power to do pretty much anything um and I you know use text and email um I use the the app called inoc caption if I want to caption phone calls if I'm struggling with a phone call a lot of the times I can just hold the phone up to my air and to my t-mic um I can use video relay if I want to use ASL to communicate or communicate with other tough people um but I I notice I've been using the speech to text app
a lot um especially in very difficult listening situations and I think sometimes I use it kind of maybe when I don't need it because I love showing people about it um I I always love when someone says oh I didn't know about that um and just so you know um in addition to having that app on Android if you are an iPhone user and you know I've done um a survey where I did informally on Facebook do you realize it's 5 to one on average iPhone users to Android users um amongst the Duff and heart of he
aring Community for people that I know so for you iPhone users um there is a feature called live captions and you find it under the accessibility menu on your iPhone um it says live captions beta and it's a speech to text app where you have to press the microphone and then you'll see captioning on your phone now it works a little bit differently looks a little bit different than um live caption for Android but you know such as the nature of the Beast you looking at an iPhone screen versus an And
roid screen is also a little bit different um what I also like in addition to the um the captioning feature of of live transcribe is that you have the sound notifications feature so sometimes when I'm doing work from home I'm sitting clear implants off my phone is up I have live transcribe or and sound notifications on because I want to know if my kids are walking into my room or if my timer is going off or something like that and um it it's just nice to have that um I should also mention with l
ive captions I just saw something in the chat box it will also caption your face FaceTime calls or your Zoom calls if there's no captions turned on um the Android version will do that too so there's a lot of similar similarities when you look at iPhone and when you look at Android but that's you know we don't have time to go through that all today that's a whole other webinar that I've given um David or Dave deales I was interested in you talking about your international travels because there ar
e apps out there also where you you can you know translate so someone could be speaking in one language and you can get text output in another language and um I my favorite for that would be Microsoft translator um I think that that's a really great app I love the fact that you can split the screen so if you're face Toof face with someone you can talk and then they can read their output in a different language so that one was cool um I do have an iPad and a MacBook Pro when I have to talk Apple
to Apple um and and that's what I do most of my work on my preferred video conferencing platform is also Zoom like um like David belridge mentioned for me the things that I like the best about Zoom is that you can multi- pin which affects your view on your screen or you can multi um Spotlight which affects the view of everyone else's screen so that's something that the host would do um I appreciate that you can take the captioning that's at the bottom of the screen and click and drag it and put
it up anywhere you want on the screen I typically like to put it at the top of the screen so it looks like I'm looking at the camera while I'm also reading the captions um I also like in meetings that you can rearrange the the windows the video Windows as long as someone is not uh does not have a spotlight um so you know those are features the captioning I have to admit you know in the beginning of the pandemic I was pretty mad that it wasn't an automatic thing that you could use like on Google
meet or Microsoft teams or the fact that you had to have a paid version of Zoom to have that accessibility and I applaud The Advocates that were out there creating petitions um you know furthering the cause to kind of really challenge Zoom to think about the way that they were um providing that accessibility so that was really exciting to see um all right what else do I like I don't have it with me right now but I have this Bluetooth microphone that is about the size of my pinky that I use for a
ll of my zoom calls that I have in my office right now I'm actually in my clinic so that's why I have headphones you'll hear bus announcements going off here pretty soon but that little Bluetooth microphone when my voice is this far away from the microphone it's going to be more clear it's going to be more robust than me talking and it going all the way down to the microphone on my computer and by having a really good signal it really does give the automatic captioning a better chance and while
I'm thinking about it you know we've been throwing around this terminology or This Acronym AI AI stands for artificial intelligence and it is one way that people describe the captioning that's automatic on Zoom um what we are offering for this webinar is cart captioning and cart is an acronym for computer AED real time translation and we have an awes we have an awesome captioner Lisa Johnston um who is listen in processing and then typing on a stenograph the signal and preventing or providing yo
u the most accurate kind of captioning that's out there um and there is a little bit of a delay versus cart versus AI captioning um but you know for people that need the absolute accuracy I believe cart is the gold standard for that for people that have pretty good hearing a residual hearing and just miss wordss here and there some of us prefer captioning like AI cap AI captioning um and and it's all about choices right I love having choices um let's see what else is on my list um I have a phone
cradle that I keep by my desk and also by my bed so if my phone vibrates it will light up the one by my bed has a bed shaker I use that when I travel I use it to be alerted if the fire alarm is going off so you know different things around my house um don't forget about you know these home systems like Alexa and Google nest and you know apple homepods and things like that so my smart home we happen to use Alexa and I love that I have Alexa to talk to to turn off my lights I have Smart bulbs tha
t will light up two different like signals or weather events or fire alarms and things like that so that is very uh possible oh when Amazon delivers me another you know package like my fifth one for the week I know it because it goes to my watch and my light blinks um I will consider interpreters also accessibility assets and Technology um and I'm so grateful to be able to use them on site but also in a virtu ual setting like on Zoom um the last technology that I'll talk about um as an audiologi
st I do have to listen to other people's hearing aids and clear implants and stuff like that um and the devices that have been around were ones that I could use but I never felt that they were effective and I was very fortunate that I just happened to find um a product called an amplified listening kit and what it does is it amplifies the sound like pre amplifies it before it goes to my CLEAR implants so audiologists with hearing loss speech pathologists with audiologist parents who might have t
o do listening check on their kids devices um teachers you know if any of them have hearing loss what I did and um I hope that Michael will post this in the chat um is a slide deck that I made to tell you what the options are for how to do a listening check if you have a hearing aid if you have a clear implant something like that um in terms of emerging Technologies I agree about artificial intelligence or AI getting better um I should also say other acronyms for this automated captioning is aut
omatic captioning automatic speech recognition machine learning all of those things are you know kind of interchangeable for engineers it's probably like oh that's not what that means um but that's a terminology that the people are using out there okay so AI even since the pandemic has really gotten so much better and I think it's because we have these billions of hours of zoom and teams calls and things like that just feeding the speech algorithms and and just getting better um I think another
exciting um Frontier is VR or virtual reality um an example of this would be things like the Apple Vision Pro goggles um that allow you to see different things and analyze the environment um I Envision a time kind of like maybe this marriage of these kind of smart glasses and these captioning glasses that make it a lot more seamless um I was first introduced to VR goggles um a few years ago at a medical professionals with hearing loss conference where there was a neurosurgeon that gave a present
ation about how he used the Microsoft Hol lens to do brain surgery while also watching an interpreter and captioning and I thought that that was fascinating and I think you know where I say Holograms I mean those of us that grew up in the 70s and 80s and think about you know Princess Leia from Star Wars being projected from R2-D2 there are ways that people are projecting themselves to give Keynotes where they talk in English but the text that comes out of their mouth at that venue is in Japanese
so you know the possibilities really are endless um and so you know we've all been talking about orac cast and I know that um orac cast is is not available yet but it is coming there is no doubt about that it's all about product and people developing products and with orac cast there are basically two pieces just like there is for remote microphone technology you have to have a transmitter and you have to have a receiver okay so right now both of these products are being built when it it comes
to those of us that have hearing aids and clear implants um the only two products right now that are Ora cast ready would be the clear nucleus 8 and the ReSound Nexia hearing aid I know it's going to keep coming as companies make new products but right now that's the only two the other option would be just like Apple earbuds you know they have that technology ready and I know people are also thinking about some kind of intermediary accessory for people that want to listen to orac cast but their
technology is not compatible yet okay so you know again showing my age I grew up with that combination VHS and DVD player because it's there's no switch where overnight that technology is there it it takes kind of time for that to develop so ways that um to EXP expand a little bit about orac cast um things that you can do could be sharing music you know with multiple people you know I think about my kids how they give their one airpod to their friends so they can listen to music at the same time
well with orac cast you can both do that with both your airpods um you can use it as an assisted listing device so I'm thinking oneon-one when you approach like a service desk um you can choose a specific silent screen like at Buffalo Wild Wings or at the gym where you know the the TV is turned off even though they you know they play lots of music but you can actually connect to a specific television to listen to listen to that particular audio um you can use it in things like a Museum tour for
small groups you could use it in large groups like movie theaters or Live Theater or house of worship um and I know that Loops are also here um and are available now and all you need to have is a telecoil but I ever so briefly saw in the chat box someone mentioning how audiologists don't put telecoils or enable telecoils in hearing aids or teach their patients about that and I absolutely I'm very sad by that um and I I try to encourage tequil use but just like you know having telecoil and or ca
st to me is kind of like having VHS and DVD there's going to be a time where they both co-exist and you know I love that we have options um you know I still have a couple of VHS things that I kept even though I don't even have a player for it anymore but you know there will always be things that we can use that for in terms of tech resources I agree conventions um are my favorite um places to learn about things hlaa is the best for me um I I say how it fills my brain and um it's great for actual
ly Hands-On trying on the Technologies um I love also Alda the association of late Deen adults for kind of filling my heart and being around people that are like duffen like me um I've been part of TDI for a few years now and it's helped me understand things like telecommunication and emerging Technologies and the research behind it um and being an audiologist it's funny I I don't really learn about assist of technology so much at Audiology conference I feel but I learned about the research behi
nd it okay um like David I'm also um involved with Niti National Technical Institute for the Duff um I'm a board member for them and you know our colleges and universities are the future this is where things are developed um if you have relationships with with any of them definitely you know give them input on things um online materials are are things that I mostly access and funny enough I learn a lot on social media it it sends me down rabbit holes or tells me about things that I didn't know a
bout um and you know again you know just knowing people that are smarter than me that challenge me I'm going teach me um I do have some take on messages can I just am I going way over time or do I have a little bit of time Jill uh if you could wrap it up in a minute or so that'd be great I can do that so um first take on message tell people what you need otherwise they will make the decision for you so know what works best for you so that you can articulate that at a venue and say I want caption
ing or I would want to use an assistant listing device um while I love technology I also love defac clock give yourself Grace and give your ears a Break um and again there is no one best technology for every person try different Technologies and I guess my last point is know what the return policy is on any of these Technologies as you're trialing them so okay I'm done okay thanks Tina thanks Dr balard and Dave appreciate all the wonderful information that you shared with us um we have a lot of
questions coming in um before I get to those um you can see now that we're going to start sharing some resources on the screen so hopefully that will answer several of the questions that came through the chat about uh resources that are available um for you the um other thing I wanted to mention is that this uh webinar is being recorded and the slides will be available um on the HLA website um in the near future so if you've missed anything during uh the presentation today which I I know you hav
e we've only had um an hour today and it's going by incredibly fast with a lot of information um so please check back and um we'll have all that information available so that you can review anything that came up um during the webinar today so with that um let me uh go into some of the questions um that have come in and um let let me start um Tina this is probably going to be um for you maybe um or a cast you know that's come up um several times here but how do you know when it's available like a
nd how do you connect to it to be able to use it you know when should we start checking on our devices and everything to know that it's available I would ask your audiologist um again um the only device right now that is the only clear implant I know right now that is compatible is a clear nucleus 8 so for everyone else they do not have the compatible Bluetooth chip so you'd have to upgrade your processor or use some kind of intermediary device that hopefully someone will develop you know um but
how do you access it like when you're out in public oh I'm sorry so there's different there's different ways that that's going to happen um some people can use their phone there's a thing called an orac cast assistant which is basically an app that you use on your phone and the transmitter will sell out or send out what are called advertisements saying oh I'm here click on this if if you want to access this um there have been talks about like Taps even on device to access things like that um th
ere may be like some kind of fob or things like that but right now the most common um assistant right now is using your phone uh Michael did you want to ask a question next yeah so just looking through um all the the C or questions thank you so much for submitting uh great questions you know one thing that I'm really seeing a lot is how can I find out if a place is Loop or advocate for uh telecoil use and and same thing goes for you know captioning how do I request an advocate to make sure that
I have access to captioning Andor looping or telecoil who would like to answer that question Tina would you mind taking that one or David yeah um I would say definitely um go to the hlaa portion of get in the hearing loop I think that they have the best userfriendly resources for what is a loop how can you advocate for it with your audiologist um looking at you know they there's a a place where you can search for venues that have telecoils as well so U my recommendation would be to start with hl
aa because in my mind they really are the experts on hearing loops and and the biggest Advocates so I'll answer the capturing part a little bit so I think one cool thing about an app for your phone or enabling the capturing on your iPhone is that you have total control over that so I was at a conference in Scotland recently and was overwhelmed by the Scottish accent um but Ava did a pretty good job of you know transcribing in real time um more formal accommodation like asking to have my classes
captioned um I would just ask my supervisor um you can also go to human resources and if you run into difficulty there that's why I would turn to Jan um so that Jan can help educate your supervisor HR independent of you doing all of that um but of course the more you know um the more you can help facilitate that process so when I need accommodation I'm always really clear about exactly what I need and I almost always get it because I explain it in terms of how I can do my job better um as oppose
d to you know uh just pushing my rights but how I can better serve my students and serve my University if I have a certain [Music] accommodation can I add one more thing there was a lot of chat about waking up and I just want to share found the Fitbit is awesome for waking up um because it vibrates gently and it has a long battery life for like a week um so sorry go ahead Michael no no that was that was a good addition and just a couple comments that came through the chat that I thought were rea
lly good to help you know answer the question one uh person mentioned you know there is the Ada law that says you you know these public places have to provide accommodation and accessibility and that certainly includes you know hearing access and whatnot the other thing I thought was really interesting one person chatted uh was under Google Maps it will say if a place is looped I did not know that but that is a really cool thing to to look for under Google Maps so thank you um and Tina one uh th
ing that keeps coming through is uh both for you David and Tina they would love to have your contact information if you are willing to share maybe you can put that in the chat box um because I think they loved hearing what you had to share um I would say if you go to my website there there is a contact me part of that so please use that to contact me all right and I'll put that link in there in the chat box again for everyone and my email address is showing right now on the slide that's visible
perfect thank you both and Jill I think we may have a maybe just one more minute for another question if you want to take the last question uh sure um so I think the last question here um Dave dellis you mention you know being in noisy environment um but do you also use like some type of hearing protection um when you're in noisy places to so but that you can still you somewhat hear other people as well yeah I think uh you know actually again you know in these extremely noisy environments um tho
se of us that use coar implants actually have somewhat of an advantage because uh at least my device uh which is an advanced bionics device has a dcel cut off and so any sound above I think it's about 80 DB uh just gets uh um not not cut off but it just doesn't go above that so I can be I can be very comfortable in An Extremely Loud environment without any hearing protection whatsoever because obviously I have no hearing to protect yeah so audiologist here I have to say though you should still w
ear hearing protection even though it's not protecting your hearing because sound has a force and we don't want any kind of trauma to your eardrum or to the bones or anything like that so even if it's not protecting your hearing per se you do want to protect like your Anatomy good point oh super um so thanks for those uh insights there and we are now a minute or so past our scheduled time so just wanted to conclude by thanking everybody for your attendance um loved all the great questions and co
mments and sharing of your um you things that you have found that have worked through you through the chat um I think that's been very helpful and like I said before we'll have the uh video and the transcript and the slides from this webinar available to you on the website um so feel free to check back in and uh get reminded of all the things that we talked about today so thanks for joining and have a great rest of your day thank you everyone
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