Playing On-line video games with voice chat

 

My husband and I loved to play RPG games online and we tried out multiple Massive Multi-Player Online Role Playing Games (MMORPG).  The first few games we played I really enjoyed playing since I got to talk to so many different people from all around the country.  I was able to type in order to communicate with them. 

In the games we would form organizations known as guilds in which we would work together to achieve a common goal.  In one previous games known as Horizons: Empire of Istaria we were able to work together to build our own houses and shops. Sometimes we would gather together and hunt together since it was safer to work together as a group.

Later my husband and I moved on to a game known as World of Warcraft.  In the initial stages we were able to form a small guild and make some friends to socialize with and to go explore dungeons with.  Most of these dungeons would have 5-10 players accompany you and they were not very difficult and could be played pretty much just for fun and perhaps some new gear for your character.

As we progressed in the game it came to a point where we needed to participate in larger scale dungeons known as raids.  These had up to 40 players participating in order to bring down some of the boss level monsters. 

The amount of coordination required in order to achieve success in the raids was quite a bit.  There was just too much instructions that needed to be given to individual players that it didn’t make a lot of sense to type it all out.  Many guilds moved to voice chat programs such as Teamspeak or Ventrilo.  Our guild used Ventrilo and it allowed you to chat through a headset and speakers in order to hear one another.  It was intresting technology since 40 people were able to communicate with one another at the same time via voice chat.

 

Being a hearing impaired person though made it difficult for me I had to rig my headset to a speaker that allowed me to crank up the volume.  I had my analog hearing aids at the time so I would try putting the headset on my hearing aids or sometimes go without.  It also didn’t help that I had an important role in the raid.  I had the role of an off-tank which basically means I had the job of keeping the big boss angry at me so all my friends could pound it to death.  If our main tank went down I had to leap in and take over or perhaps during certain encounters we had to coordinate switching between the two of us.  The required me to hear when it was my turn to do something.

Sadly the game became more and more difficult and my hearing wasn’t getting better so my husband and I stopped participating in the raids.  It didn’t help that him and I were doing some smaller level stuff together and would see the guild mates cheer that they had just accomplished something massive.  We eventually gave up on the game and stopped playing all together and cancelled our accounts.

Now that I got my new Opticon digital hearing aids and use the streamer I am able to plug my computer into the streamer and I can hear just fine.  We haven’t gone back to gaming though since we are now focused on other things but I wish I had this technology earlier.

Opticon Digital Hearing Aids and my experience with them.

I wrote in my previous blogs about my challenges I had using cell phones with my hearing aids. When I was having problems at work hearing on the phone and understanding customers that were talking to me I went to look for help. I made an appointment with the Texas Department of Assistive and Rehabilitative Services (DARS). My DARS counselor explained to me that there were many new advances in hearing assistive devices and sent to an audiologist for a new hearing test and to determine what would be for me.

My meeting with my audiologist gave me a lot of hope. He explained that the hearing aids I was wearing was old technology and that I should try out some new digital hearing aids made by Opticon. He told me that I would hear things more clearly and I would pick up sounds that I normally didn't pick up with the older analog hearing aids. So he took new ear mold impressions and ordered my new hearing aids.


It wasn't very long and soon I was back at the audiologist getting new hearing aids fitted and programmed. He also surprised me by showing me that these hearing aids came with an extra device known as a streamer that communicated to my hearing aids via wireless communication. The device is can communicate with my cell phone using blue tooth technology. You see folks walking around all the time with a blue tooth device in their ear and now this streamer device will do the same thing for me but instead transmit the sound directly into my hearing aids. The sound quality of a cell phone call is just amazing compared to what I was used to. The other neat feature is you can plug your MP3 player or iPod into the stream and play music directly into your hearing aids. I immediately went home and plugged my MP3 player into the streamer and started listening to my favorite music.

When I got my new T-Mobile Gravity 2 phone my husband went ahead and purchased the 4 Gigabyte SD card. I already knew that this phone was compatible to my streamer to handle calls via blue tooth but what about the music player option on the phone? We loaded up some of my favorite songs on the the SD card and decided to test it out. I was actually very surprised to be hearing music streaming into my ears with no wires attached to my ear or streamer. It worked like a charm and have been very happy with the new phone and streamer combo.

With all the things I do like about the hearing aids they do happen to have some draw-backs. First off the hearing aids were designed to filter out background noises so when I'm at work or in a restaurant I can focus on the person talking to me. So what's the bad thing? Well it appears that what is also missing is environmental noises as well such as background music, birds or noises in a distance. I sometimes feel that I cannot hear any of my surroundings and it bugs me.

On top of the surrounding issue I was used to individual volume controls on my analog hearing aids however my new hearing aids work together and if I turn up the volume on one it turns up on both. If I'm hearing too much in one ear and not enough in the other then my only option is to go back to the audiologist and have him reprogram the hearing aids. After getting these hearing aids I reported back to the audiologist five times in just two months for adjustments for sound.

I have also had to report back to the audiologist multiple times because the hearing aids have stopped working correctly. I have had to have internal and external speakers replaced on them a few times already. I have had the hearing aids sent in for repairs twice and it hasn't even been a year since I have had them.

These hearing aids also require a new mold that require a lot of maintenance by the user. You must buy little rubber wax stoppers to help prevent wax from going into the mold. This doesn't seem like a bad idea except for how often you end up changing them. This also requires me to visit the audiologist often just to buy refills of the was stoppers.

These hearing aids also use a smaller battery than my analogs and have to be replaced within a week and a half compared to my old hearing aids where a battery would last for three weeks. I think part of this issue is the fact that the hearing aids have off button. Yes that is correct no easy way to turn off the hearing aids. I'm told by the audiologist that you pull the battery out of the hearing aids to turn them off. This is very inconvenient when I'm laying down for the night and leave my hearing aids on the nightstand. If I wake up and need to hear something I must put the battery in and close it and then power on the hearing aids. I've been known to loose a few batteries because of this very issue.

Talking on the cell phone

When my husband got his first cell phone I tried to hear on it and wow I got a ton of feedback from his phone. In fact it got to the point that I would hate to sit next to him while he was on the phone because of the intense buzzing that would go on in my ears. I'm sure some of you out there have heard computer speakers going crazy when someones cell phone is getting ready to ring. Now just imagine that right in your ear, I can assure you it's not pleasant.

So if a cell phone does that just being near me then how am I supposed to use one? Well at first we tried to find some phones that were just really loud and I would take my hearing aid out and try to hear without it. This really didn't work out that well and of course since I couldn't hear that well I was then yelling in the phone assuming the person on the other end cannot hear me as well so basically everyone around me can hear in detail both ends of the call.

My husband made it his mission to find a cell phone that would be compatible with my hearing aid. The first problem we ran into was we were using T-mobile service and at that time there were not many T-mobile phones compatible to hearing aids. In fact the signalling that T-mobile used for communications was different than many other providers and that caused some of the issues I was having with the cell phones. After some further research we learned that clam-shelled style phones work better for people with hearing aids as the antenna is further away from the ear than other phones.

My husband was a Nokia fan at the time and did some research on Nokia's website to see that were aware of the issues with cell phones and hearing aids. In fact they created a loop that could plug into your phone and wear around your neck into order to create a t-coil effect so your hearing aids would work better with the phone. We actually knew of someone that used this with their Nokia phone.




We continued to do more research and found out about HAC ratings on cell phones that the FCC started to enforce. The rating scale ranges from 1 to 4. The four possibilities are: M1 or T1 (poor), M2 or T2 (fair), M3 or T3 (good) and M4 or T4 (excellent). We made it our goal to find at least a M3 or T3 phone. Again T-Mobile phones seemed to max out at that level but Verizon, Sprint and other providers had M4/T4 rated phones. We ended up getting a Samsung phone and when I used it I would leave my hearing aids in my ear and leave it in normal mode and I could hear okay but of course I had hoped for better.

I later had found out that some of my issues were due to the fact that I was using analog hearing aids and that it was time for me to move to the digital age. Moving to digital hearing aids opened up many different opportunities for me but that is something I will save for next time.

Challenges listening on the telephone

One of my many challenges of being a hearing impaired person is actually trying to hear on a telephone. Growing up I was fortunate enough to get an amplified telephone so that I could hear well enough on the house phone. This of course didn't do me much good when when I went to a friends house or tried to use a phone booth. Phone booths were supposed to have increased volume but most of them I tried out really didn't seem to have the feature set up correctly plus they didn't appear to be compatible to my hearing aid when I switch them to phone mode.

I tried using an adapter that went over the handset in order to increase the volume on other phones but that didn't seem to work that well.

I started to really run into problems when I started working since the phones at work were tied into large PBX phone systems and of course they weren't compatible with my hearing aid since they didn't have the t-coil in them. At one job I tried explaining the difficulties I was having on the phone and how my co-workers kept pressuring me to answer the phone but the office manager wasn't any help. I showed her a catalog of phones that were specially designed for hearing impaired folks that could probably be compatible with their phone system but they weren't interested in looking at them. I guess they really weren't concerned with the requirements of the American Disabilities Act. I ended up not sticking around the job because it was clear between co-workers and the office manager that they didn't have any compassion for my challenges and in fact they acted as if I was using it as a crutch. I think one of reasons I have that issue is the fact that I speak very well for a hearing impaired person but that's mainly due to how much speech therapy I've gone through. The fact that I had to quit actually traumatized me a bit and made me feel that I couldn't make it in the work environment and really lowered my self esteem.

At home my amplified phone finally gave out after many years of use. I went to the local community deaf and hard of hearing center and they helped me apply for a voucher to get a new phone. Once I got the voucher I was able to get a new phone that actually had closed caption on it. Wow! A phone with closed captioning? Sounded like a great idea but unfortunately some of my calls are in Spanish and the phone was unable to translate Spanish speaking into closed captioning and would just report that the caller was speaking a foreign language. I ended up giving up on the phone because honestly it was not amplified enough compared to my original phone. I also strangely had really large buttons as if I was more visually impaired that hearing impaired



I won't even get started yet on cell phones as that is entirely a whole new story perhaps I will share that next time.

Living in the hearing impaired world

I am a hearing impaired person and I feel that I live in two separate worlds. For one I do not hear well enough to consider myself part of the hearing community however I was taught in regular school (mainstreamed to the deaf community) instead of being taught in a deaf school and I don't know sign language so I don't feel integrated with the deaf world either.

When I was first born no one knew that I had problems hearing and in fact I was thought of as a normal child until I was 4 years old. At first the school system wanted to put me in the same classes as the mentally handicapped because they knew I had some sort of disability but wasn't sure what it was. I wasn't talking really talking yet and they were trying to figure out what was wrong with me.

My mother later pulled me from these classes and started to put me into regular classes but I still wasn't learning or developing as quickly as everyone would have hoped. The school ended up testing my hearing and that's when everyone finally realized that I had a hearing disability. To my parents relief I wasn't completely deaf however I did have a severe hearing loss and I would need hearing aids and therapy to get caught up with my now delayed development.

I was 5 years old when I got my first pair of hearing aids. When I put them on I heard sounds I never new existed. The first thing I remember hearing was the wind blowing in from the car window on the way home after getting my hearing aids. I rolled down the window and listened to all the new fresh sounds that I hadn't heard before. When I got home I went into the back yard and started running around trying to hear new things that I hadn't heard before. I heard birds tweeting and singing away and I started to hear the rumble of storm coming up. Then it started to rain and for the first time I learned that rain actually made a noise as it fell to earth. I jumped excited around yelling to my parents how I could hear the rain. They could see my excitement and my mother burst into tears.

Now my life was starting to change since I had hearing aids and I could hear it was time for me to start to learn to speak. I started going through speech therapy in order to learn how to pronounce things correctly. There were still challenges for me at this time as I was exposed to multiple languages all at once. You see I was newly naturalized American trying to learn English however both of my parents were had Spanish as their primary language for some time before I got my hearing aids we lived in Italy, since my father was stationed there, so I was exposed to Italian as well. The school advised my parents that between my hearing impairment and the multiple languages I was exposed to that it would slow down my language development as well.

I continued to get speech therapy until my graduation from high school. By this time I had learned to compensate some of my hearing loss with lip reading as well. I struggled through high school thanks to a problem with math but still managed to graduate so I started off in college.

When I started going to the local community college I became more exposed to the deaf community. I met a girl in my English class who had a hearing disability as well. She happened to have an interpreter and a note taker to assist her in her classes. The interpreter's job of course was to interpret everything that was said in the class room to my friend and to help her speak as well. The note taker took notes for my friend since she was unable to take notes and watch what the interpreter was saying at the same time. I realized what I was missing out on since I have been trying to take my own notes my entire school career but every time I have my head down to take notes I can't read lips so I sometimes misunderstand what is said.

My friend then introduced me to the deaf community at the school soon I was starting to be exposed sign language, interpreter's, note takers, tutoring and other things that the deaf community depended on at school. It made me realize that I had to struggle harder and it seemed more on my own than some of the members of the deaf community that embraced the services available to them.

I started to wonder if I should of been raised in the deaf community, learned sign language and even attended schools and classrooms specially made for the deaf children. I went ahead and requested a note taker to assist me in my classes so I could focus on reading lips during instruction from the teachers. I felt it was already too late at this point to use an interpreter because first I would have to learn sign language before it really became useful to me. My family didn't know sign language so I would only be using this language at school so I decided to skip it for now. I sometimes now wish I learned it while I had the chance as I am much older now.

I later married someone who was not hard of hearing and we had a son who we later found out also had a hearing problem. The good news is I know what challenges I went through and would be able to understand his issues and help him through it. We caught my son's hearing issue at three years old when we noticed he wasn't really speaking. We were testing him before hand but the audiologist had a tough time testing him since he was always fidgiting around and didn't pay attention to the tests. We were able to get our son into speech therapy sooner than I was exposed to it. We got him into the local headstart program to help give him a chance to make it through school easier than I did. We even had a speech therapist come visit our home to teach him as well.

This blog will be about the struggles that both my son and I face every day as we try to integrate in the hearing community even with our challenges. We are fortunate to live in an age of technology and I will explain what advances has helped us and what things we would still like to see. Perhaps you know someone who has similar challenges and you can share you story with us as well. My next post will be about my challenge of starting my first job and how I coped and how things could of gone better.

Till next time

Stuckin2worlds