Simulating Deafness

Description:

Partial hearing loss can affect how a person perceives the world. The standardized definition of hearing loss, often used to determine candidacy for cochlear implants, determines “the configuration, severity, and site of lesion from a pure-tone audiogram”. By emulating hearing loss with common sounds, we can increase our understanding of how people may perceive the auditory world. I designed a web application that filters audio based on a pure-tone audiogram, a graphical representation of perceived volume intensity. This method provides an audible representation of various hearing loss scenarios. This pure-tone audiogram and peaking filter approach simulates hearing loss through an easy-to-use web application that allows different and familiar sounds to be attenuated according to several common patterns of hearing loss. Data from a pure-tone audiogram were applied to the MP3 audio stream.