Hearing Accessibility Needs

Globally 1.5 billion affected by some type of hearing disability and most of us being exposed to increasing levels of sound in day-to-day life, whether it is from noise (sound that we generally don’t want to hear) generated by cars, planes, trains or entertainment – such as live music, sporting events, gaming, listening to music or watching films etc. The effect of this increase in exposure to noise and sound is a growing risk to our hearing health. This article written with examples of tinnitus and growing hearing accessibility needs.

Why Hearing Health Matters?

The 2022 Ofcom report Media Nations UK estimates that adults in the UK consume around five hours per day of screen time outside of work, many hours of which, especially in the 16 to 34-year-old group, will be while using headphones.

Biggest change post-pandemic along with subsequent risk to hearing health over the past few years has been the increasing level of recreational sound exposure (RSE) from headphones use for individual entertainment, a trend that accelerated during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Tinnitus

Tinnitus is the name for hearing noises that do not come from an outside source. It's not usually a sign of anything serious and may get better by itself.

Cases of tinnitus have shot up by 50 per cent in 15 years in the UK, as the pressures of modern life take their toll on the nation’s hearing.

When hearing health has been affected to many, how this can be handled by better digital accessibility? Let us look at some key examples.

Live Transcribe

One of the best features brought to android phones in recent years is the Live Transcribe feature to help people affected by part or full hearing impairment.

Live Transcribe transcribes speech in real time to your Android screen, making it easier for people with hearing impairments to engage in a conversation. Alongside the real-time text, it creates and saves a transcript of each conversation for up to three days.

If Live Transcribe isn't pre-installed on your device, install the app from the Google Play Store on devices running Android 6.0 and above. Here's how to use it:

1. Open your Android phone's Settings app.
2. Scroll down and tap Accessibility.
3. Scroll down and tap Live Transcribe under the Captions heading.

Core Problem of Hearing Loss

Affected people with hearing loss rely on lip reading to communicate and need to be able to see people's faces. If websites and digital apps are provided with telephone numbers to contact their customer support, it will be difficult for those with hearing impairment to rely only on contact number to make a call.

It is important to have different contact methods (other than telephone number) so people can contact about the services through different mode such as email, text, letters or social media such as whatsapp, x(formerly twitter), instagram or facebook.??

SC 1.2.9 of WCAG

Web Content Accessibility Guidelines suggests text-alternative for audio-only services: https://www.w3.org/WAI/WCAG21/Understanding/audio-only-live.html

According to uiaccess.com, People who might not listen to the audio or watch the video,

• People who are deaf or hard of hearing.
• People who won't spend the time to listen to the audio or watch the video, but will skim a transcript.
• People who have difficulty processing auditory information, for example, because of cognitive disability.
• People who are not proficient in the language who find it easier to read than listen.
• People with low bandwidth connections who don't want to download the larger audio or video file.
• People who pay for bandwidth usage and thus don't want to download the larger audio or video file. This is often an issue with phones and other mobile devices.
• People who cannot play the audio because they are in a noisy environment and they can't hear it.
• People who cannot play the audio because they are in a quiet environment and they don't want to disturb others.

Create Accessibility Awareness

Bringing accessibility awareness to engineering community is extremely important since not every disability is visible and enabling digital applications to adhere to ADA and WCAG guidelines are highly recommended for an #inclusive world.

One of the latest Unicom conferences made a wonderful awareness on accessibility in London last week. Thanks to Thenmozhi Paramasivam , SathiyaNarayanan Gnana Prakasam and organisers Mukulika Mukherjee in bringing such valuable #Accessibility insights to global audiences:

Summary

Hearing Loss is more common than diabetes according to ncoa.org but not many digital apps and websites are designed and developed to support hearing disabilities.

Catering to users with hearing impairment is critical than ever before. Providing text-alternative, phone alternative contact options are some of the great examples to support people with different accessibility needs.

Creating hearing disability awareness for digital hearing accessibility is important and let us join hands to make it a better place to live-agree?

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