Auditory cues provide people with information about events outside of their field of view and can so help detecting potential hazards. People with severe hearing loss, i.e. hard of hearing, deafened, and deaf people, often cannot or can only partially benefit from auditory cues, which can lead to a lowered quality of life. Even though hearing aids are available, not everyone can benefit from them. To provide deaf people (i.e. deaf, deafened, and hard of hearing) with auditory cues from environmental sounds different assistive devices have been introduced, usually for use at home. A flexible and mobile assistive device basing on a smartphone is presented in this contribution. It detects and recognizes acoustic events by analysing the acoustic environment of the user. By using pattern recognition algorithms the user can define the sounds that should be recognised by the device. Warning sounds occurring in road traffic were chosen as demonstrator. Interviews were conducted with deaf people to evaluate the concept and to gain more insights into the user needs and expectations.

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In this contribution, a concept of an assistive technology for hearing-impaired and deaf persons is presented. The concept applies pattern recognition algorithms and makes use of modern communication technology to analyze the acoustic environment around a user, identify critical acoustic signatures and give an alert to the user when an event of interest happened. A detailed analysis of the needs of deaf and hearing-impaired people has been performed. Requirements for an adequate assisting device have been derived from the results of the analysis, and have been turned into an architecture for its implementation that will be presented in this article. The presented concept is the basis for an assistive system which is now under development at the Institute of Microsystem Engineering at the University of Siegen.

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