The Attentive Hearing Aid: Eye Selection of Auditory Sources for Hearing Impaired Users

An often-heard complaint about hearing aids is that their amplification of environmental noise makes it difficult for users to focus on one particular speaker. In this paper, we present a new prototype Attentive Hearing Aid (AHA) based on ViewPointer, a wearable calibration-free eye tracker. With AHA, users need only look at the person they are listening to, to amplify that voice in their hearing aid. We present a preliminary evaluation of the use of eye input by hearing impaired users for switching between simultaneous speakers. We compared eye input with manual source selection through pointing and remote control buttons. Results show eye input was 73% faster than selection by pointing and 58% faster than button selection. In terms of recall of the material presented, eye input performed 80% better than traditional hearing aids, 54% better than buttons, and 37% better than pointing. Participants rated eye input as highest in the “easiest”, “most natural”, and “best overall” categories.