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.

Hearing is considered to be the most important sense for the communication between people. Several studies have shown that hearing loss can lead to deterioration in quality of life, reduced social activities, feelings of alienation and hence the increasing incidence of depression symptoms.An early audiological rehabilitation is a prerequisite for proper communication among people with hearing loss. Knowledge has been shown to be of great importance and structured learning and individually targeted approach can be expected to facilitate the audiological rehabilitation.The purpose of this study was to examine the effect of an educational effort for people with hearing loss where the effort was made in the distance within the audiological rehabilitation and was followed-up by professional phone support, through a randomized controlled study.The study group consisted of 69 hearing aid users who were randomized by an independent person into two groups, an intervention group and a control group. The intervention group (n = 33) had access to the book "When the sounds are weaker - on hearing and hearing aids". The group received weekly topic-based information related to the different chapters of the book, in five rounds.

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.

Background: Bone anchored hearing system is a surgically implantable system for treatment ofindividuals with hearing loss. The Softband is intended for patients who can benefit from a boneanchored hearing system but who are not yet suitable for implant surgery.Objective: The aim of this study was to investigate whether an adhesive bone conductor, Adjoin, canbe used as an alternative to Softband.Material and Method: Twenty adult subjects with normal hearing participated in the study.Measurement of functional gain and speech intelligibility was performed with Softband and Adjoinwhich then were compared. A questionnaire was answered by the participants after the measurementsthat treated their subjective experiences with each option.Results: The objective measurements yielded no overall difference between Softband and Adjoin forthe group studied. The subjective results showed differences in the perceived comfort as well as whichof the two bone conductors that would be preferred to use in everyday life, with Adjoin being thepreferred option. No difference was detected on participants perceived gain, sound quality and speechintelligibility.Conclusion: Based on the measured results, Adjoin seems to be a suitable alternative to Softband.However, there are questions about how Adjoin works with long-term use..

The purpose of this thesis is to determine how well a student is prepared as a future librarian at BHS in Borås, when it comes to serving individuals with hearing disabilities at the libraries. The theory and combined methods is that of discourse theory, interviews and Webb searches. The source material for this thesis comprises course material from 2002 and 2003, with the main focus on the spring term 2003 and on what is called the users perspective användarperspektivet. The study is divided into two parts: firstly, to determine the students expected knowledge and his/her future professional identity through this knowledge. The user groups that were mentioned to the students during the education were also linked to the students knowledge.

Bakgrund: Attityder gentemot funktionsnedsättning grundar sig historiskt sett i samhällets förändring och kunskap. Attitydbegreppet utgår i examensarbetet från Theory of planned behavior, där bakomliggande faktorer leder handling. En hörselnedsättning är en dold oftast kronisk funktionsnedsättning. Svensk lagstiftning reglerar rättigheter och skyldigheter i arbetslivet för inblandade aktörer. Personen med hörselnedsättning bearbetar sin situation i tre skeenden i en livsomställningsprocess.Syfte: Genom integrativ litteraturstudie kartlägga attityder personer med hörselnedsättning möter i arbetslivet och personens eget förhållande till sin hörselnedsättning.Metod: Innehållsanalys av 13 skandinaviska undersökningar, där hörselnedsättning ingår.

This graduate thesis takes its hold in an idea that many values, in cultural heritage environments, other than the onesthat can be seen with the eyes are as important for the experience of the environment as the visual ones; however theenvironments are usually defined by values that can be experienced visually!Interviews were held with four visually impaired persons. This to get a better understanding for how big part othersense modalities play in the experience of the cultural heritage environments. Questions were asked about what thevisually impaired especially value in cultural heritage environments and what is of value for preservation. Also whatcan be done to make the environments more impressive for them, how they experience the material part of theheritage, architecture, shape and color and with what senses they primarily remember. Furthermore the thesis aims todraw attention to how value definitions made by the conservation field affects the experience of the environmentsand therefore the accessibility for visually impaired.

Objective: From the patient?s perspective describe communication difficulties, which can arise, and how they are handled in their contact with public health care and illustrate their needs of communication.Method: A study of literature was carried out to receive a background and an insight in previous research concerning the subject area. Twelve women with hearing loss was asked to complete a questionnaire, with open questions, regarding communication difficulties in health care situations.Sample: For the literature review, scientific papers were selected via the database, PubMed using relevant keywords. Seven were selected for closer review. For the survey study twelve women were asked to participate which ten of those responded.Results: The study of literature shows that communication difficulties occur in public health care between patients with hearing loss and the nursing staff.

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.

Purpose: To examine the hearing environment for tattoo artists regarding occupational noiseand to see whether tattoo artists are exposed to hazardous noise according to Swedish WorkEnvironment Authority regulations. Method: Using a dosimeter we measured a total ofseven sessions of approximately one hour on seven different subjects, located on five studiosin Gothenburg. As a complement we did also hand out surveys based on twelve questions toexamine habits, experienced sound environment and to see if there were any hearing relatedpatterns. Results:. Sound level measurements showed that the lower exposure action valueLpAeq,8h 80 dB(A) in one case was reached if applied to the average working time of sixhours.

KKS includes difficulties hearing speech in background noise although results from pure toneaudiometry are normal. The condition is also called ?Obscure Audiotory Dysfunction? and?Auditory disability with normal hearing?. KKS affects a heterogeneous group. We believethere is a need for synthesis of existing studies to acknowledge the condition in Sweden toimprove rehabilitation for the affected individuals.

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.

As the use of smartphones and other mobile technology in our society is constantly increasing,so too does the possibilities of visually impaired persons increase as they are becoming moreable to enhance their quality of life with the help of mobile assistive technology. The purposeof this study was to explore how rehabilitation and habilitation organizations, which areworking with the visually impaired, should approach new technology. We have researched thisby examining the possibilities, opportunities and barriers of using mobile assistive technology.Based on this, we formulated the following research question: What factors are important forrehabilitation and habilitation organizations to consider in order to support, promote andcreate quality of life through the use of mobile assistive technology in their work with thevisually impaired? To answer the above question an exploratory study was made at an eyeclinic in the Västra Götaland region. The study was done through a series of qualitativeinterviews with both staff and patients at the eye clinic.

Objective: From the patient?s perspective describe communication difficulties, which can arise, and how they are handled in their contact with public health care and illustrate their needs of communication.Method: A study of literature was carried out to receive a background and an insight in previous research concerning the subject area. Twelve women with hearing loss was asked to complete a questionnaire, with open questions, regarding communication difficulties in health care situations.Sample: For the literature review, scientific papers were selected via the database, PubMed using relevant keywords. Seven were selected for closer review. For the survey study twelve women were asked to participate which ten of those responded.Results: The study of literature shows that communication difficulties occur in public health care between patients with hearing loss and the nursing staff.

Idag finns få studier gällande könsskillnader inom hörselvården, däremot finns forskning inom andra vårdområden. Hörselvården består bland annat av rehabilitering, där den tekniska hörselrehabiliteringen är en stor del. Den innefattar främst utprovning av hörapparater och hörseltekniska hjälpmedel.    Syftet med denna studie är att undersöka om det finns några skillnader mellan män och kvinnor gällande den tekniska hörselrehabiliteringen.    Metoden för studien är kvantitativ och deskriptiv. En journalgenomgång inom ett enskilt landsting genomfördes. Totalt ingick patientjournaler för 56 personer i undersökningen.