There is a lot written about being hearing impaired. There are guidelines on how to adjust the indoor environment for the hearing impaired. There is even more written about gardening and garden design from different aspects. However, I found out that there is nothing written about garden design or adjusting the outdoor environment for the hearing impaired. At the background of myself being hearing impaired and garden designer I realised that I actually had adjusted my own garden out of the fact that I am hearing impaired.

The project has been performed in a close collaboration with Hörsam who works in the field of hearing technology. In a first meeting with the company, the Project group was showed a few existing storage boxes for hearing aids. The company thought they were unnecessarily large with plenty of unused space and wanted a new, smarter solution to be developed.The project began with user studies in which audiologists, maintenance technicians, future users and others were interviewed. The purpose was to obtain their views on today's storage boxes and to find out how well the users maintained their hearing aids. It proved to be a large lack of knowledge regarding the management of hearing aids within the users.

The purpose with this study was to systematically examine scientific studies of audiologic group rehabilitation. The definition of audiological rehabilitation was explored, different variables that influence the result and how the outcome measures should be done and its relationship with the goals of audiologic rehabilitation. The method used was a literature study. Pubmed and Cinahl were used for the search of literature. Some articles were searched from scientific studies reference lists and also advice from the supervisor.The result from the different studies shows that the effect of rehabilitation varies as there are many aspects that have an affect on the outcome measure.

Adjustment to acquired hearing loss can be understood as a process of learning and change where the point of departure is the subjective apppraisal of a person?s hearing loss in a social and cultural context. The aim of the study was to describe women?s thoughts, emotions and actions prior to audiological rehabilitation, since these are considered important for the ongoing process of adjustment and for the planning of rehabilitation. A phenomenographical approach was used in order to describe the variation in the women?s attitudes before attending rehabilitation.

This c-level essay examines how deaf and hearing impaired individuals use smartphones to live and communicate in a ?hearing world?. The main target is to find some understanding of the struggles of this population and smartphones have made it easier to adapt to the hearing worlds? demands with the applications that follow. To acquire the information for this essay, representatives from both the deaf and hearing impaired communities were interviewed.

Abstract The present study examined if early deaf people and people with severe hearing loss perceive visual information differently than hearing people. An experiment was conducted with eight deaf participants and eight participants with normal hearing. The participants were between the ages of 18-74 years. The participants were asked to look at fifteen different images portraying manipulated illusions, and then assess if the images were of the same size. Subsequently another image depicting a different illusion with a face hidden in it was presented to the participants.

This c-level essay examines how deaf and hearing impaired individuals use smartphones to live and communicate in a ?hearing world?. The main target is to find some understanding of the struggles of this population and smartphones have made it easier to adapt to the hearing worlds? demands with the applications that follow. To acquire the information for this essay, representatives from both the deaf and hearing impaired communities were interviewed.

Abstract The present study examined if early deaf people and people with severe hearing loss perceive visual information differently than hearing people. An experiment was conducted with eight deaf participants and eight participants with normal hearing. The participants were between the ages of 18-74 years. The participants were asked to look at fifteen different images portraying manipulated illusions, and then assess if the images were of the same size. Subsequently another image depicting a different illusion with a face hidden in it was presented to the participants.

A hearing loss may affect the identity development and participation among adolescents. To understand adolescents with hearing loss in modern society, it?s of great importance to ascertain how identity- and participation processes occur in new areas, such as the internet.Objective: The aim of this study was to investigate what research shown regarding identity development among adolescents with hearing loss and whether social processes on the internet may influence the participation of this group.Method: A literature review was conducted to obtain a cohesive framework of research about participation processes and identity development among adolescents. Included articles have been published 1995-2015.Results: The results show the importance of the individual?s identification with the surrounding.

Assessment of hearing aids can be done by inventories. The result of the inventories can show the patients need and how the hearing aids works in the patients daily life. The result of the inventories can be influenced by the difference in languages and the cultures. The inventory IOI-HA should not be sensitive to those factors.The aim of this study was to compare and analyse material, method and to report and analyse the result from a pilot study made at Sahlgrenska University.The result showed that IOI-HA is a natural inventory which is able to be used internationally. The four studies in England, USA, the Netherlands, and Germany showed that the psychometric properties are similar across languages and cultures.

The capacity to process and to remember information is a basic condition for language ability and for coming reading ability. Reading ability is strongly connected to phonological awareness, receptive vocabulary knowledge and working memory capacity. In what way hearing impairment in children affects development of cognitive skills and later on reading ability is an area that has attracted minor attention for research.The aim with this study was to investigate changes in cognitive skills and reading ability in children with mild or moderate hearing impairment after one year of progress and furthermore if any connections between any increases of the abilities were to be found. Comparisons were made with results from age adequate normal hearing children. Moreover prosodic ability on word-level was tested this year.

A stay in the neonatal intensive care unit of greater than 5 days is one of the identified risks ofa sensorineural hearing loss. Preterm infants usually have at least one risk factor for hearingimpairment. The period from 25 weeks' gestation to 5 to 6 months of age is most critical tothe development of the auditory system. We think it is important to investigate hearingimpariment among infants born preterm, degree and type of hearing loss, risk factorsassociated with hearing loss and how the auditory system may be affected by preterm birth.ObjectiveA critical review of the current literature including studies of preterm infants born betweengestonal age 25-37. Our aim is to identify the most common type and degree of hearing lossamong infants born preterm and if there is an association between hearing loss and pretermbirth.MethodA literature search of Scopus and Pubmed resulted in 16 articles from 2000-2015ResultsMost of the infants in this study had a severe to profound sensorineural hearing loss.

Today many people with disabilities are excluded from cultural activities. The reason for this is that activities and the environment are not adapted to people with disabilities. The aim of this study is to describe the process to make cultural activities accessible and to describe the importance of good communication between cultural suppliers and their customers. Other questions raised are accessibility to cultural activities for people with hearing disabilities, the activities in the marketing process, the interaction between theatre companies and its audience and if the interaction has contributed to the theatre's future development. Qualitative interviews with staff responsible for integration at seven theatres have been performed.

This study investigated whether in-situ audiometry, delivered via hearing aids, is a better option as a basis forprescribing hearing aid amplification, compared to conventional audiometry. By examining the real ear insertgain (REIG) in 29 ears (18 subjects), that had been fitted with a hearing aid programmed using both conventionalaudiometry and in-situ audiometry, the study looked at whether in-situ audiometry based prescription is closer tothe NAL NL1's fitting target than audiogram based prescription. The hearing aid Siemens Pure 7mi with speakerunit M was used on all participants. The results showed how in-situ audiometry based gain at certain frequenciesis more consistent with the target curve, especially at 1000, 1500, 2000 and 4000 Hz. It was not establishedwhether the findings of the study were statistically significant.

The aim of this study was to examine language abilities and their correlation to reading comprehension in 12 year old children with mild tomoderate sensorineural hearing impairment. Eight children with mild to moderate hearing impairment were tested in listening comprehension, grammatical comprehension, receptive vocabulary, phonological short termmemory, word finding, semantic relations, reading comprehension, comprehension of written words and decoding of words and non-words. The results were compared to results from a comparison group. The children with hearing impairment had significantly lower results in phonological short term memory and decoding. No significant difference was found between groups in reading comprehension.