Ear to Ear
An App to bridge the gap between the hearing & silent worlds
"Boo you know what ee seal ake?"
Can you imagine hearing this and having to figure out its actual meaning? Can you picture yourself asking the other person to repeat it again and again? Well, this is how the question "Do you know what it feels like?" sounds to a person with hearing loss on some specific high frequencies.
Have you ever watched an action movie? If you have, you surely remember that high-pitched sound almost piercing your ears after an explosion. Could you imagine someone living with that sound in their ears the whole time, for their whole life?
If you have a hearing loss, have you ever had difficulties explaining to others the way it impacts you?
This App will bridge this gap. It is designed to provide normal hearing people the same experiences which people with hearing loss go through every day of their life.
The need for Ear to Ear
Around 466 million people worldwide have a disabling hearing loss. It is estimated that by 2050 900 million people will have a disabling hearing loss. With these numbers due to double in less than 30 years. There is an urgent need to educate the world on how they can understand hearing loss & support those with a hearing loss. Most importantly, we want to help the hearing world understand what it's like to have a hearing loss, and more specifically a hearing loss of someone they know. We want to bridge the gap between the Deaf, hearing-impaired & hearing world.
What will the App provide the intended user?
The app will allow a person with hearing loss or a hearing professional acting on their behalf to input an audiogram and then use it to modulate sound in a way similar to that person’s unique sense of hearing. This will allow a hearing person to experience a range of sounds (ambient sound, conversations, or media) in the way that a person with hearing loss would experience them. Note that hearing aids perform a similar function, but in the reverse direction: the audiogram is used to modulate the sound and bring it closer to “normal” hearing; here we are reversing from the normal hearing into a specific profile of hearing loss.