A visual feature indicator for the severely hard of hearing

A visual display was designed which supplements features of speech generally not perceived by individuals with severe hearing losses above 500 Hz. With the audio speech signal and visual feature information presented simultaneously, severely hard of hearing individuals correctly identified 78 percent of the items on CV syllable lists and 75 percent of the items on CVC word lists. Without the supplemental visual information, the individuals could correctly identify only 35 percent of the CV syllables and 40 percent of CVC words through auditory perception. Implications of this work for future aids for the deaf are discussed.