Kako 1
Emmanuel Kako
821719152
EE-502
Dr.Szeto
March 3, 2019
HW Assignment 3
9.3 When it comes to the social life of people with auditory or visual disabilities each person will face different hardships and will have different strengths and weaknesses. When speaking in terms of a person with a visual disability, a person that is blind will still have a very good social experience due to having the ability to listen and using sound to his/her benefit. While a person with a auditory disability may not be able to hear the voices of their company, it is still found to be a god experience due to the fact that they still are able to have face to face interactions. When speaking in terms of their work life people that are blind typically use tactile substitutions and finger spelling methods in order to complete their tasks. People that are blind on the other hand use Teletype devices to help them in their interactions at work.
9.4 The hearing aid consists of many parts; the major components that make up a hearing aid are microphone, amplifier, receiver, and a power supply. The microphone serves the purpose of an environmental signal. The amplifier serves the purpose of information processor, while the reviver is the speaker that is inside of the ear acting as the user display.
9.5 There are four types of hearing aids on the market today, they are:
A. Behind the ear
B. In the ear
C. In the canal
D. Completely in the canal
9.8. Cochlear implant is a prosthesis done when there has been damage done to the cochlea of the inner ear. In order for the cochlear implant to be a viable option, the implant must be able to fulfill these functions:
A. Assist in sentence recognition
B. Assist in bilateral tone hearing
C. Assist in general audio output.
9.13 Intensity and amplitude is affected by the number of electrodes used in a cochlear implant. The use of multiple electrodes enables the CI to receive numerous frequencies at different locations along the basilar membrane.
9.14 The most significant difference between an electrode and a channel in a cochlear implant is the electrodes job is to do the stimulating, while the channel is just merely where the information gets directed to.
9.15 In order for a CI to recognize speech it must encode frequency, intensity, and temporal patterns. One way to do this is to take “vocoder” approach. In this approach incoming signals are broken down into sets of signals of different frequency by using a filter bank. Another approach is known as Continuous interleaved sampling. This is when electrodes are stimulated at different parts of the cochlea in sequence as opposed to being done in adjacent. Doing this and only stimulating one electrode at a time helps eliminate interaction between channels. A more refined CIS is known as ACE. In ACE approach a number of frequency bands are greater than the number of electrodes and the signals sent to the electrodes are based on the bands with the highest output at any given time.
9.18 A TTY device gives the ability to a person that is deaf to use the phone through typing out their message and having the users on both ends of the phone read and type out their messages. There are two main types of TTYs on the market. The standalone unit is used with a computer allowing the user to call any computer that has telecommunication set up. A tty modem using the baudot coding can only connect with other ttys. The baudot is very commonly used amongst the deaf community, it does not require any “handshaking” protocols nor does it need a carrier signal.
9.23 There are several instances where a person that is deaf must be notified of a certain sound that it going off such as, a babies’ cry, a smoke/ fire alarm, a doorbell . . . etc. it is for moments like these that alerting devices must be used. Alerting devices recognize these noises and give some kind of visual or tactile alert to the blind user, it will alert them through vibration or a flashing light.
9.25 When trying to communicate with a person that is both deaf and blind, you must use different approaches in order to make the conversation enjoyable. When having a conversation between a person with no disability and a person who is deaf and blind one approach is to use a standard keyboard and display for the non-disabled person and a brail keyboard and display for the person that is deaf-blind. This will enable a face-to-face conversation for someone who does not understand brail or know how to sign with a person that is deaf-blind. The second approach is to use a portable note taking device with built-in brail keyboard and a refresh able display. The hearing users types, the deaf-blind users can follow one letter at a time using the brail. The final approach is that the users use two different devices connected by a cable or wireless transmission. All users will have a key board and display, either QWERTY or brail. The advantage is that the two users will have the comfort of having their own devices.