Category Archives: Uncategorized

Finally real Bluetooh

I have been waiting for this for a long time: finally hearing aids are on the market which can be connect to (Android) smartphones without any clunky adapters. It took so long, because Android only started to support low energy bluetooth (in Bluetooth 5.0) on Android 10.

Enno Lenze sums up the first experiences with it in this article (in German).

If you are wondering now “Didn’t Phonak do something like that for a while already?” The answer is: not exactly. The Audeo Marvel and Bolero Marvel do bluetooth to any phone without adapters, but they kind of bend bluetooth to their will. I have yet to test this in practice. We will see how they perform in contrast to the new Bluetooth 5.0 devices.

DeafIT 2020

I am happy to see that the dates for the next DeafIT conference are confirmed: March 26th/27th. It is the 6. DeafIT and it is once again taking place in Munich, Germany.

DeafIT is an IT conference targeted towards IT professionals with hearing loss and with that is the first conference that I ever attended which fully supports their talks with live captioning and sign language interpreters.

Read my report about DeafIT 2018 to learn more about the details.

Currently there is the Call for Speakers going on. So if you have an interesting IT topic you want to present, please submit it here.

hack4ears Hackathon in Berlin

I am please to promote the following event taking place in November in Berlin: a hackathon about the hearables of the future.

It’s taking place in the Motionlab Berlin and you are invited to sign up:

https://www.eventbrite.de/e/hack4ears-der-hackathon-tickets-66869240699

hack4ears is an event organized by Hear how you want to hear, a citizen sciene project, Fraunhofer, and others.

Unfortunately I myself will not be able to join, but I hope you will have a lot of fun and hack interesting stuff!

10 things you should never say to a deaf / hearing-impaired person

This article nicely summarizes the frequent douche-bagginess that deaf / hearing-impaired people are facing.
http://limpingchicken.com/2012/09/25/charlie-swinbourne-ten-things-you-should-never-say-to-a-deaf-person/

I can confirm that every single point once in a while ruins my days. Interestingly, I find the point “But I find subtitles annoying” very upsetting. It happened to me several times that I was invited to a DVD evening with friends and when I asked for subtitles to be switched on I was facing an hour long discussion about whether or not it is necessary. Seriously, the most disappointing fact is that it is even highly intelligent people fail to get that a hearing loss is not “negotiable”. When I say I need subtitles, then it is a fact and not a matter of convenience.