Fraunhofer Institute for Digital Media Technology IDMT
Fraunhofer Institute for Digital Media Technology IDMT
© Thinkstock

© Thinkstock

Hearing Assistance on the Telephone

Hearing Assistance on the Telephone

For people with or without hearing impairment – offer your customers a relaxed communication, even in diffi cult acoustic conditions using Hearing Assistance on the Telephone. The system helps you to integrate novel and current state-of-theart signal processing technologies into available communication systems. This technology improves the speech quality for the normally hearing, but also for hearing impaired people. With this new system, your customers can communicate via phone or Internet – without limitations.

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Better Intelligibility

The system reduces noise, leading to less listening effort which can be tiring in difficult acoustic situations. Consequently, people without and with little hearing impairment take advantage of the system. Hearing Assistance on the Telephone adapts to the individual user via different presets. Every call is adjusted to the individual hearing system, the perceived quality is significantly improved by a constant and easily understandable sound pattern. Even in bad phone connections, the speech signal is always supplied at a pleasant level.

Talking on the Phone without Hearing Aid

Innovative signal processing strategies adapt the speech signal to the individual hearing preference. As a result, also the hearing impaired can communicate better on the phone.1

1Note: The hearing assistance software does not have the functional scope of a hearing aid and is not a medical device.

User-Friendly Operation

The user selects one of the predefined hearing profiles. So, the system adapts quickly and easily to the individual hearing preferences. The adaption is carried out automatically and without further user interaction, this way offers people with and without hearing impairment optimal intelligibility and significantly more convenient hearing comfort. As a consequence, incorrect handling by the user is avoided and the natural communication during the conversation on the phone remains undisturbed.

Use of Innovative Technologies

Benefit from the expertise of the Oldenburg hearing scientists of Fraunhofer IDMT. The signal processing algorithms utilized in the system are based on strategies used in hearing aids. Now, hearing support can be integrated as an additional service in a telecommunication system – e. g. in phone networks, for audio and video phones on the Internet or in video conference systems. 1

1Note: The hearing assistance software does not have the functional scope of a hearing aid and is not a medical device.

Acquisition of New Customers

The features of the hearing assistance technology extend your target audience by the rising number of hearing impaired people, who could not by now use the phone and other means of communication, or only with diffi culties. You offer them the opportunity to take an active part in communication.

Works with Existing Devices

The hearing support can be centrally integrated in the available infrastructure. Available end user devices, (e. g. phones), can still be used. This means no additional costs to the user for buying a new device. The user does not have to be accustomed to a new device and can instantly profi t from the new signal processing strategies.

Loudness adjustment and speech enhancement are carried out by an effi cient multiband compressor. Using presets, it can be adapted quickly by the user. If sufficient processing power is available an additional noise reduction clearly improves the perceived signal quality. For this, psycho-acoustic models are used to adapt the level of noise reduction to the signal in an optimal way.