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The purpose of this paper is to provide insights on the most hindering barriers that sight and hearing impaired passengers face when using public transport services. Furthermore, possible convenient solutions to the identified problems shall be presented. To allow for an understanding of these propositions a short introduction and clear definition on sight and hearing impairment is provided.

First a clear definition of sight and hearing impairment is developed to delimit from blind and “normal” persons. A two phase approach was utilized where in the first step qualitative interviews were conducted and the findings were then evaluated based on a literature review.

The authors found a wide variety of different problems being imposed on impaired passengers that could be segmented into four categories (“stops and stations”, “vehicles”, “general mobility problems” and “public awareness”). Additionally multiple solutions to each of these barriers are presented and the main target group is indicated.

Further research is required in the perception of the impaired on specific barriers and solutions, which was only qualitatively provided in this study. Additionally the attitude and awareness of public transport companies towards the recognition of sight and hearing impaired as a specific target group and the implementation of solutions for them are important factors that are not investigated as of yet.

As public transport is an ever more important factor in everyday life, the responsible authorities should be made aware of the specific problems imposed on sight and hearing impaired persons. Therefore, this paper provides a first comprehensive list of barriers with convenient solutions that should be considered for a barrier‐free public transport system.

This paper provides a first introduction of barriers and possible solutions for sight and hearing impaired passengers in public transport systems. Therefore, authorities and public transport companies looking for options to improve their services can lean on these results.

Hearing impaired users often find it difficult to listen to voice over television, computer or public announcement systems due to background noise, music or poor sound quality. This paper presents a hearing impairment simulator that can help digital content developers to understand the auditory perception of hearing impaired users. Existing hearing impairment simulations often fail to publish results on validation or running the system on stored files. The present work describes validation result on a hearing impairment simulator and link to download the system that can simulate any sound stored as a wav file.

This work presents a simulator with a downloadable link to the software and results on a couple of user trials involving users with varying degrees of hearing impairment validating the system. The simulator also simulates frequency smearing which is not available in most online hearing impairment simulators. The simulator is part of a bigger project which also involves simulating visual, cognitive and motor impairment.

The result shows the present implementation can accurately simulate hearing perception for spoken voice. It also demonstrates that both frequency attenuation based on audiogram response and smearing are needed for accurate simulation as random frequency attenuation does not distort the sound well enough to be inaudible.

It should be noted that this simulation is not accurate enough to be used for medical purpose, rather aims to be an engineering tool to simulate approximately correct auditory perception of hearing impaired people. However, like other researches on user modelling and simulation in HCI, this simulator aims to enhance the design space where designers can optimize volume and quality of sound output and if necessary of background music or noise.

This paper presents a hearing impairment simulator that can help digital content developers to judge the sound quality of their content for hard of hearing users.

Existing literature on hearing impairment simulators either presents a software without detailed result on validation or focuses on detailed theoretical results on psychology without any easy deployable software. Most existing software also does not allow running simulation on stored file which limits their purpose. This work presents a simulator with a downloadable link to the software and results on a couple of user trials involving users with varying degrees of hearing impairment validating the system. The simulator also simulates frequency smearing which is not available in most online hearing impairment simulators.

Despite developments in the fields of technology and health, some people may still have congenital or acquired disabilities. In our world, where one in every seven consumers is disabled, these consumers also have the right to utilize the services offered to them in the best way as the other six. With the developed technology and innovations, it has become easier and more inexpensive for disabled consumers to access products and services. The number of disabled consumers is also increasing day by day in the tourism sector. However, the designs of touristic products are not suitable for every type of disability. The concept in disabled tourism that is known as “Quiet Tourism” in the literature represents the group including consumers with hearing and speech loss. This section aims to present consumers with hearing and speech loss who have to continue their lives this way becoming a new market for accommodation firms and what types of difficulties and opportunities may be encountered. It is aimed to show that the existing infrastructure at accommodation firms is not adequate, but there is a considerable potential.

This paper examines how the Australian Quality Council and the European Foundation for Quality Management address issues of access and corporate responsibility through their respective devices, namely the Australian Business Excellence Framework and the EFQM Excellence Model. It then examines the impact of the UK and Australian Disability Discrimination Legislation in light of UK and Australian studies on the provision of services for the hearing impaired by call centres.

Hearing aid (HA) using is an option for enhancing the sound transmission. It effectively improves hearing ability during communication. In Thailand, two-third of hearing impaired persons were elders, while the utilization of an HA was low. This study aims to explore how the decision was made on the use of HA among the hearing impaired elderly.

Mixed-methods sequential explanatory design was used by starting with a retrospective study to identify the prevalence of HA use and influencing factors including demographic and clinical data. Total, 199 elders with moderate to severe hearing impairment were enrolled. Qualitative data collection for thematic analysis was conducted by interviewing 28 participants to reveal elders’ subjective reasoning.

It was found that 25.63% of elders used an HA, whereas age, types of health insurance and disability registration were significant influencing factors. Six themes of subjective reasoning emerged including social activities, disability perspective, social support, medical and personnel, rights and accessibility and benefit of HA, which determined the elders’ decisions on HA use.

This study broadened insights of the elders’ decision process on HA use, which was mutually made by both health-care professional and care recipients. The elders themselves would make the final decision. Not only objective indications but also subjective reasoning of users played significant roles on HA acquisition. To enhance HA use among hearing impaired elders, patient engagement in decision-making was crucial while hearing counselling and elimination of reimbursement barriers became essential.

Scholars have been calling for educational leadership that emphasizes socially just practices to restructure school policies and practices to create an equitable schooling experience for all students. The case of Davis K-8 exemplifies how a more traditional model of leadership (transformational leadership) coupled with a professional learning community model has created socially just practices that fully include the school's deaf and hearing-impaired students. Davis has recreated the school environment to truly value participation from all students. Utilizing a mixed-methods approach, data were gathered that highlight the practices that drive the inclusive culture of the school. Implications for practice include the impact that a socially just vision can have in more traditional leadership models and provides a model for including students with disabilities into the school culture.

Contends that, although strategic management and marketing techniques have been widely recognized as useful outside the profit‐making sector, strategic planning is one technique which does not appear to have been widely adopted. Reports the development of strategic plans in an educational service for the hearing‐impaired. Discusses the poor applicability of conventional (formalized, comprehensive, linear) planning techniques to the situation of the service and outlines the development of an alternative model, based on a more informal, holistic approach.

With the start of a new decade in 1980, the public witnessed the arrival of a significant new technology, closed‐captioned television. The culmination of nearly a decade of research and development, closed‐captioned television opened up a new world for the hearing‐impaired. Closed captioning provides a line of on‐screen, written messages co‐ordinated with the sound of the television program. These captions are “closed” in that they are visible only to viewers who have specially designed adapters, known as decoders, to make the words appear on the screen. More than just subtitles, captioning transcribes narration and sound effects as well as dialog. At last, over sixteen million hearing‐impaired individuals in the United States can read what they cannot hear on television.

It has been argued by researchers from the Anglo‐Saxon nations that the rationality of the market has increasingly infiltrated the medical field. This paper seeks to enquire via policy analysis to what extent these principles have affected the prototypical welfare state of Denmark in relation to Danish hearing health policies.

The paper is based on qualitative methods comprising observations and interviews in two hearing clinics.

The paper shows that rather than a “withdrawal” of the state there has been a process of reform. The data suggest that a distinguishing mark of the consumer role on offer in Denmark is that, along with a free hearing aid, the Danish health consumer enjoys a range of rights and reciprocal responsibilities. The paper concludes that few of the hearing‐impaired patients were able to embrace the consumer ethos, and those who chose not to wear their prescribed hearing aids experienced the added burden of moral reproach.

It makes little sense to analyse abstracted rationalities without proceeding to analyse how they actually function in practice. This paper demonstrates empirically how and to what degree governmentality is embedded in social practice in two public hearing clinics in Denmark.

Investigates ways in which computer technology can enable people with a hearing and/or speech impairment to communicate. These range from telecommunication devices for the deaf (TDDs) to software designed to teach deaf children how to read and write in English (often their second language!). Other new technology includes software that converts English into American Sign Language vocabulary, and under development is a system which will facilitate communication between a hearing person and a person with a combination of hearing/visual or hearing/speech impairment.