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Audible Alarms for the Hearing Impaired

Audible alarms are ubiguitous and inform us of such things as machine actions, communication, or danger. In this article we focus on smoke detectors, which, while very audible to a normal ear, are poorly suited to people with moderate hearing impairment. This is confirmed by some representative audiometer data. In addition, the measured sound attenuation through walls in normal homes is quite severe at the alarm frequency. Suggestions are made to make audible alarms more effective for the hearing impaired.

Author: Vanderkooy, John
Affiliation: Audio Research Group, Department of Physics, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, ON, Canada
JAES Volume 50 Issue 1/2 pp. 73-75, 77-79; February 2002 Import into BibTeX

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