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How Apple Is Putting Voices In Users' Heads -- Literally (wired.com)
schwit1 shared WIRED's report on "a life-changing technology." Steven Levy spoke with Mathias Bahnmueller as he tested a new Apple sound processor that beams digital audio directly into hearing aids.
Bahnmueller suffers from hearing loss so severe that a year ago he underwent surgery to install a cochlear implant -- an electronic device in the inner ear that replaces the usual hearing mechanism. Around a million patients have undergone this increasingly mainstream form of treatment, and that's just a fraction of those who could benefit from it. (Of the 360 million people worldwide with hearing loss, about 10 percent would qualify for the surgery.) "For those who reach a point where hearing aids no longer help, this is the only solution," says Allison Biever, an audiologist in Englewood, CO who works with implant patients. "It's like restoring a signal in a radio station."
Cochlear implants bypass the usual hearing process by embedding a device in the inner ear and connecting it via electrodes to the nerve that sends audio signals to the brain... The system Bahnmueller was using came from a collaboration between Apple and Cochlear, a company that has been involved with implant technology since the treatment's early days. The firms announced last week that the first product based on this approach, Cochlear's Nucleus 7 sound processor, won FDA approval in June -- the first time that the agency has approved such a link between cochlear implants and phones or tablets. Those using the system can not only get phone calls directly routed inside their skulls, but also stream music, podcasts, audio books, movie soundtracks, and even Siri -- all straight to the implant... Apple will offer the technology free to qualified manufacturers.
Google's accessibility team for Android has no public timeline for any similar hearing aid support, though according to the article it's "on the roadmap."
Cochlear implants bypass the usual hearing process by embedding a device in the inner ear and connecting it via electrodes to the nerve that sends audio signals to the brain... The system Bahnmueller was using came from a collaboration between Apple and Cochlear, a company that has been involved with implant technology since the treatment's early days. The firms announced last week that the first product based on this approach, Cochlear's Nucleus 7 sound processor, won FDA approval in June -- the first time that the agency has approved such a link between cochlear implants and phones or tablets. Those using the system can not only get phone calls directly routed inside their skulls, but also stream music, podcasts, audio books, movie soundtracks, and even Siri -- all straight to the implant... Apple will offer the technology free to qualified manufacturers.
Google's accessibility team for Android has no public timeline for any similar hearing aid support, though according to the article it's "on the roadmap."
Scare-mongering fake news article produced by the deaf lobby. (Yes there is a big cabal of rich deaf people, who promote deafness worldwide as a positive thing and oppose treatments. They even hire Mengele-style madmen doctors to sort their sperm and eggs, so that only 100% guaranteed deaf kids will be produced.)
Cochlear implants are the most useful invention mankind made in the last 40 years or so and it's not getting the Nobel Prize for Medicine only because there are several hereditary mega-rich and deaf clans, especially in the USA, which wage a crusade against it. They think being deaf is normal, the deaf are not disabled (lions, tigers and speeding buses disagree) and the hearing people should learn the hand-waving "sign language".
Luckily, there is at least one european country which is now considering mandatory cochlear implants for deaf babies, under the auspecies of its mandatory vaccination regime, by classifiying a new generation syringe-implanted micro cochlear device as a vaccine, so that stupid / evil parents cannot curse kids to life-long deafness. Due to costs it will be only one ear per kid, but that's enough to learn how to speak and also preserves the other ear intact should even better treatment emerge in the future, like genetic engineering, for exampe.