Design and evaluation of a smartphone application for non-speech sound awareness for people with hearing loss

Auditory cues provide people with information about events outside of their field of view and can so help detecting potential hazards. People with severe hearing loss, i.e. hard of hearing, deafened, and deaf people, often cannot or can only partially benefit from auditory cues, which can lead to a lowered quality of life. Even though hearing aids are available, not everyone can benefit from them. To provide deaf people (i.e. deaf, deafened, and hard of hearing) with auditory cues from environmental sounds different assistive devices have been introduced, usually for use at home. A flexible and mobile assistive device basing on a smartphone is presented in this contribution. It detects and recognizes acoustic events by analysing the acoustic environment of the user. By using pattern recognition algorithms the user can define the sounds that should be recognised by the device. Warning sounds occurring in road traffic were chosen as demonstrator. Interviews were conducted with deaf people to evaluate the concept and to gain more insights into the user needs and expectations.