writings
A New Day, A New Year
I launched hearability.space in 2023 with the goal of exploring how the ability to hear is compromised and how hearing-related activities and technologies can improve the experience. The exploration continues!
Where Oh Where Did the Mute Button Go?
Hearing aids can be programmed for better and for worse.
Imagine you are walking down the street and you could tone down the intensely piercing siren, or keep the hot rod ghetto blaster from ripping your head off.
For me, one of the most immediately effective controls on my old hearing aids is the mute button. A quick press on the mute button is how I survive the assaults of city life, the approaching siren, the blaring, jacked-up, “look at me” aggression emitting from some idiot’s car. The mute button is also how I can concentrate reading or writing when there is ongoing ambient distraction.
Here’s to Your Hearing Health!
Government oversight is slow to change, but it’s changing.
On April 21, 2016, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) hosted a workshop to gather perspectives on how to remedy untreated hearing loss, which the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST) had identified as a serious national problem. I was invited to speak, and in my allotted 15 minutes I argued in favor of PCAST’s recommendations, which sought ways to “open up the market for innovative hearing technologies.”
Over the Counter and Through the Woods
Navigating options for hearing aids
The advent of hearing aids finally becoming available “over the counter,” gives me hope that more people who struggle with hearing may begin to get help. But hearing is so individual, I also fear that many people will try a device that does not help them enough and give up trying. Technology can transform your life, but only if you take charge!