2022.10.14
“Hello everyone, I’m Wesley, an audiologist at the North District Center of Children’s Hearing Foundation. It’s a pity that I can’t meet you in person today but let me show you the services of the Children’s Hearing Foundation through the camera!” This is not a video from a Youtube channel, but a live broadcast of Children’s Hearing Foundation at the Biomedical Engineering Day event in Chung Yuan Christian University!
There has been an annual Medical Materials Innovation Competition on Biomedical Engineering Day. This year the event has expanded, inviting many colleges with biomedical engineering departments in Taiwan to participate. Although the event was held virtually due to the pandemic, it did not affect the enthusiasm of the participants-more than 500 people showed up online to join the event!
Live virtual tour guide let the needs of children with hearing loss be seen
It is the first time for the Children’s Hearing Foundation to adopt live virtual tours. On this Biomedical Engineering Day, the audiologist Wesley Huang explained in detail the hearing evaluations, hearing aids, acoustic and electrical analyzers, which are indispensable technology for helping children with hearing loss. Also, Yun Chen, the auditory-verbal specialist, explained the outline of the auditory-verbal training course, and led the teachers and students of the Department of Biomedicine Engineering to understand the process of how children with hearing loss learn to listen and speak, and gradually move towards the goal of introducing cross-disciplinary technology into the field of early treatment, benefiting more Children with hearing loss!
Hearing assessments for infants and toddlers are never easy!
“The Children’s Hearing Foundation adopts a behavioral hearing assessment, not only to get the results of the hearing test, but also to understand the children’s auditory behavior in the process, such as ignoring or mishearing certain sounds.” The audiologist took everyone to the examination room, explaining that many toys and light boxes in the room are props to attract children’s attention to listen!
Listen closely! Sound of insects and birds in the ears of ordinary v.s. hard of hearing people
“We can use this hearing aid analyzer to detect whether the setting of the hearing aid matches the actual sound output. This machine can also simulate the hearing loss during our consultation. Let’s listen to how children with mild hearing loss hears differently from hearing people?” The audiologist simulated the sounds of insects and birds heard by children with mild hearing loss through the electroacoustic analyzer. The sounds are not only much lower than those of hearing people, but also the feeling of ambient sound is as if compressing the three-dimensional world into a flat dimension.
After confirming on the results of the hearing assessment, following up on the auditory situations, and wearing appropriate hearing aids as soon as possible, training in auditory-verbal sessions is also required for children with hearing loss to learn to listen and speak. Therefore, the live virtual tour guide now arrives at the Chung Yuan Center of the Children’s Hearing Foundation where the auditory-verbal specialist introduces the auditory-verbal sessions!
Let’s see the props of Auditory-Verbal Specialist!
“When people know that I work with children with hearing loss, their first question often is: So, you know sign language? And my answer is: I don’t. Because auditory-verbal therapy is to allow children with hearing loss hear sounds through hearing aids, and then learn to listen and speak. We all use spoken language to interact with children in class.” The auditory-verbal specialist took everyone to the room dazzled by teaching aids, and explained that in each course, the child’s ability and status will be assessed to design the course activities!
Call on seed talents to spread love with professionalism
Children’s Hearing Foundation’s first live broadcast, through virtual tours in various scenarios of hearing service, hopes to call on the teachers and students of the Department of Biomedical Engineering to apply their profession and add value to hearing services for more children with hearing loss! Although this is only a small step towards the goal of auditory-verbal technology innovation and application, we believe that by accumulation small steps a sustainable future for the children with hearing loss will eventually be build!
