Delegates attending the annual Hear Here: Hearing Loss Community event in London were given an opportunity to learn about the potential of Auracast, thanks to Aurahear’s Phil Creighton.
The event, hosted by Harley Street Hearing in collaboration with EY, was an opportunity to network, share experiences, and gain practical insights to help navigate hearing loss in the workplace.
The event was founded in 2016 to create a space for professionals with hearing loss to connect with others who understand their experiences. Sessions were live-captioned and BSL-interpreted to ensure full accessibility.
EY hosts the event in its Canary Wharf offices, and builds on a partnership with its EY Hearing Community, an internal initiative created to support D/deaf and hard-of-hearing colleagues.
Ganeev Chadha and Ben Knighton introduced the proceedings, before Aurahear’s Phil Creighton gave an address reflecting on why he is passionate about Auracast, sharing his previous experiences with assistive listening systems in theatres and comparing it to the ease at which the Bluetooth LE Audio technology can be incorporated not just into venues, but also in the workplace and personal life.
He also revealed that 30 years, while researching his dissertation, he visited the Daily Mirror’s Canary Wharf offices and left behind a Doctor Who-style long black scarf. Whether it is still in lost property remains a mystery.
A presentation on how Microsoft’s Copilot AI system can provide Retained Transcriptions followed. This showed how speech can be turned into text during meetings, and the transcript is provided afterwards. This can be searched by asking Copilot questions such as ‘What have I missed?’ and ‘What decisions were made?’ This makes it easier for deaf and hard-of-hearing people to stay informed about what was said in fast-moving meetings with many people speaking.
The final session was a keynote speech by Sasha Gardner, VP of Operations for EMEA and host of the podcast Sasha Says. In The Quiet Work of Keeping Up, she shared her journey with hearing loss. Born with microtia and profound hearing loss, she threw herself into challenges to live life to the full, including ballroom dancing.
But last year, she decided to get a hearing aid and shared how it had transformed her life, including hearing sounds she’d never heard before, such as the fabric of her jeans moving and a banana being peeled.
Afterwards, the 130-strong audience could network over light refreshments and visit stalls from hearing aid manufacturers Starkey, Oticon, GN, Phonak and Widex. A team from Cochlear were on hand to explain more about the technology, and there were stalls from Ampetronic representative Canford, and Clarity Hearing Care.
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