By Mitchell Batavia, PT, Ph.D.
Mitchell Batavia PT, Ph.D., is an associate professor of physical therapy at New York University and a person with a hearing impairment. In addition to cartoons and flash fiction, he has published healthcare textbooks with Elsevier and Butterworth-Heinemann.
For individuals with long-term hearing loss or severely degraded auditory input, the lack of reliable auditory feedback represents a challenge many orders of magnitude greater than the temporary masking used in this study.
It bears repeating: What improves access for a group with a specific disability invariably also helps the greater population.
Because noise-canceling earbuds are so comfortable and block everything out, people wear them for three, four, five hours straight without realizing the cumulative effect on their ears.
I made one hat to solve problems, never imagining how many other adults and children would relate. It’s an honor to be able to give something back to the cochlear implant community that understands this journey so well.
We are proud that Hearing Health Foundation-funded scientists are always well represented at Association for Research in Otolaryngology MidWinter Meeting.