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Did you know the first demonstration of closed-captioning was held at Gallaudet College in 1972? The first TV show? Mod Squad! Real-time captioning was developed in 1982 when court reporters were trained to give television viewers virtually instant access to live news, sports and entertainment broadcasts. During the 1980s, television networks began to caption their shows, but viewers had to …

As we age and our bodies betray us; the last thing that remains are the human voice and meaningful words. Speaking and listening are often the last thread of connection we have with each other. Caring for someone we love who also has a hearing loss and dementia can be particularly hard. How do you know if the communication problems …

#1- Wear them all day, every day. It is tempting to leave your hearing aids on the dresser when you’re home alone or will be in a quiet environment for hours. But think about that for a minute. Your ears are always ‘on’ even in the most peaceful times. Because an area is quiet does not mean it is completely …

Hearing aids aren’t very fun at the best of times. When they constantly stop up with earwax they can be downright maddening! Take heart, this is a universal frustration and, for the most part, can’t be helped. Your ear produces wax as both a skin conditioner and as a defensive mechanism to prevent the intrusion (or expedite the removal) of …

Earwax – What’s the Obsession? If you’ve been on social media over the past few years, you’ve probably watched videos of people cleaning their ears. You’ve either been very interested in watching those videos or flicked away immediately from watching them. Either way, earwax is having a big moment to understand and realize what it does for your ears. Who …

A patient came in last week with tremendous pain in his right ear. He was cleaning his ears with a cotton swab and succeeded only in firmly packing the earwax further in his ear. In an effort to remove the wax, he used an over-the-counter wax softener that made the impacted wax swell and put additional pressure in his eardrum. …

If you are a true audiophile or a budding professional musician, passive hearing protection may not be the best answer. The world of electronic music monitors has exploded in the last few years and there are now more options than ever. The noise isolation and canceling properties of the latest products have become so sophisticated that they are as solidly …

In a noisy, crowded room, your brain can pick up subtle parts of speech and automatically arrange them into useful thoughts. Ever wondered how this miraculous feat happens? Well, new research brings us closer to understanding just that. Researchers at Trinity College in Dublin were able to pinpoint the regions of the brain responsible for processing each individual sound that …

One of the most common complaints I hear is how hard it can be to understand the television. One of the biggest frustrations is the lack of volume consistency from one program to the next or even between channels. (Don’t even get me started on the commercials!). There are many products in the market that are designed to make it …