Are you a hearing aid user looking for guidance on listening to music with hearing aids?
You can download our leaflet by clicking on the icon.
Are you a practitioner looking for tips on addressing musical needs in clinic?
You can download our practitioner leaflets by clicking on the leaflets below.
The Hearing Aids for Music (HAFM) project explored how hearing impairments and the use of hearing aid technology affects people’s music experiences through a series of clinic surveys, an interview study and a national online survey.
It was an interdisciplinary project led by a small team and supported by an advisory board who are leaders in a range of disciplines including music psychology, clinical audiology, computer science, auditory perception, deaf education, and hearing therapy.
The HAFM team obtained a large amount of original empirical data from > 1,500 hearing aid users and > 100 audiology practitioners across the UK and internationally, and have worked with > 35 National Health Service (NHS) Trusts. The project has been pioneering in its accessibility – all studies have been accessible for deaf people with British Sign Language as first language.
Project findings have shown that whilst hearing aids facilitate musical appreciation, there are challenges in musical settings such as distortion, difficulties hearing words in songs, and difficulties in live performance contexts.
To improve music listening, our research has identified behavioural strategies for hearing aid users and musicians (e.g. listening practice, the use of music programs, assistive listening devices) and practice-based strategies for audiologists (e.g. counselling tips, fitting hearing aids in clinic, tools to aid discussion). We have developed advice leaflets for hearing aid users and audiologists which outline these strategies, and which are freely available above and on our resources page.
Back in 2017, we held a conference to bring together hearing aid users, researchers, audiologists and manufacturers to examine current issues and potential solutions in the perception of music through hearing aids. Materials from the conference (including abstracts, presentation slides and 10 fully captioned videos) can be found here.
You can read and download our final project report here.
We have recently received further funding from the Medical Research Council and the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council to progress our music and hearing aids research. See our blog page for more details.
We hope to raise awareness of the project via the twitter feed @musicndeafness and this website. If you would like to get in touch for any reason, please do email us on musicandhearingaids@leeds.ac.uk.
Music is an important part of peoples’ lives and can have powerful physical, social, intellectual and emotional effects on individuals – even for those with mild, moderate, severe or even profound D/deafness.
There are currently 11 million people with some level of deafness in the UK. This represents one in six of the population and the figure is set to rise dramatically to 15.6 million by 2035.
Hearing Aids for Music is a research project that explores how hearing aid technology enables and affects the perception of music.
Modern hearing aid technology is designed to amplify speech, helping verbal communication. We want to find out about how the use of hearing aid technology affects the way we listen to, and engage with music in our everyday lives.
For updates about the project and other posts about music performance and deafness, please follow us on twitter at @musicndeafness