Development of an infrared hearing aid.

This infrared hearing aid transmits an auditory message as an invisible, silent, IR light beam. By sending the signal directly to a listener's receiver, the aid suppresses background noise. For most hearing-impaired listeners, the improvement in speech reception under ordinary listening conditions is immediate and dramatic. The results of several demonstrations with elderly individuals in group listening situations show that incorporation of IR sound transmission in public address systems would markedly increase the accessibility of public facilities for the majority of hearing-impaired individuals.