Report on HLAA conference

attended the HLAA conference in providence USA from 21st to 23rd June
2012.

The conference though aimed at the older age range of American deaf/hard of
hearing population was well worth attending there was a large and
informative exhibition hall with the three main ci manufacturers along with
various other American companies.

Remote captioning on mobile phones is a big thing here in America with
several companies competing with each other for users. It's a shame that
such services are not available in the UK. I wonder if communication giants
in our country can be persuaded to take on board technology that is readily
available worldwide as we have remote captioning centres based in the UK so
don't see why a app can't be developed for smart phones to allow this
technology to be used on the move.

Workshops in general were very technical and scientific it would have been
nice to see some workshops of practical nature rather than sitting through
information heavy sessions trying to take in all the information.

A session on captioned radio turned out be be very interesting this was a
company that is due to roll out captioned radio programmes this year some
software needs to be downloaded to a computer or a smart phone to use the
service and can be accessed world wide. Ireland are the next country to
trial the technology and if successful the UK could well soon benefit as the
BBC already use the technology to subtitle its online content

The research symposium - how the brain makes sense of sound was split into 4
separate talks by different professors from John Hopkins University these
were on central auditory system basics and the effects of abnormal auditory
input to the brain , listening in noise, music perception And hearing loss
in ageing.

I only went to the second and third talks which were very interesting and at
timed difficult to understand what they were taking about!! I won't go into
detail what I picked up though people can contact me on ben@benleigh.co.uk
if they would like more detailed information.

I also went to Geoff Plant's talk on music for adults with cochlear implants
which was essentially a theoretical overview of what us Brits have
experienced at his practical workshops

People were pleased to see someone from the UK and asked after Stuart
McNaughton and Tina Lannin I said hello for you

I must add that I experienced Water fire on Saturday night which rounded off
a great conference with a beautiful atmosphere of fires on the river an
music playing out all along the waterfront.