For many hearing impaired people, a visit to a concert or theater performance is not self-evident. Speech is no longer well understood and music is not always full anymore. Fortunately, there are more and more options for hearing impaired music and theater enthusiasts.
Make inquiries about the options available at the location.
Selecting
a seat For people who are not very hearing impaired, it can help to choose a seat in one of the front rows. The sound source is closer and it is easier to hear speech. Actors are used to articulate well and often use a lot of facial expressions. There is the best view of this in one of the front rows. Besides the fact that for some cabaret shows these are not always the ‘safest’ place, these are often chairs in a higher price category and therefore not always sufficient for everyone. However, this is not always a solution for hearing aid users, as there may still be ambient noise and possible reverberation.
Telecoil
When hearing aid users listen to music or a theater performance, the sound enters the microphones by default. However, other disturbing noises also enter those microphones. In addition, some theaters or concert halls suffer from reverberation due to poor acoustics. Hearing impaired are in any case more troubled by ambient noise and reverberation than people with good hearing. That is why it is more pleasant for the hearing impaired to have the sound offered directly to the hearing aids. This can be done with the help of an induction loop via the T-position on the hearing aid or a separate streamer.
Radio signal
In some rooms other options are used that provide better sound quality than those of a loop amplifier, such as an FM radio signal sent to a receiver. Hearing-impaired people without a hearing aid can use headphones or earphones to connect to the receiver. Hearing impaired people with hearing aids can receive the signal via the T position or connect inductive earrings to the receiver and place them behind the hearing aids.
Smartphone
Nowadays, the smartphone can also be used in the theater. There are theater and concert halls where it is possible to create a local WiFi access point and send the sound to the smartphone in that way. Headphones can be connected to the smartphone. It is also possible to send the sound from the smartphone wirelessly to the hearing aids, whether or not in combination with a streamer.
Special evenings
There are theaters and concert halls that organize performances especially for the deaf and hard of hearing with surtitles or subtitles that are streamed to a tablet. With the latter, however, it can be experienced as a nuisance to have to look away from the stage and at the tablet; this can distract from the play. However, these evenings are not available structurally or for every performance and this Corana time will make such evenings even more scarce.
Subtitle glasses
Technology never stops. The National Theater in London has recently started offering subtitle glasses to hearing-impaired visitors.
The wearer of the subtitle glasses looks through the glasses and sees the subtitles in it. The subtitles follow the gaze direction of the wearer. Using speech recognition, the on-stage dialogues are converted into text and sent to the glasses via WiFi. Furthermore, the use can be adjusted as desired, such as the size, brightness, color and the background of the text. The position and movement of the text can also be adjusted.