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Nokia rewarded for accessibility work

By Johanna Vahtola

August 03, 2004

HELSINKI, Finland. — The Finnish Federation of the Hard of Hearing recognized Nokia with the Urpo Siirala medal for its developmental work on accessible communication. The medal was handed to Nokia at the IFHOH (International Federation of Hard of Hearing) 7th World Congress held in Helsinki on 4-9 July.

"Nokia's long lasting developmental work for easier communication for everyone is remarkable." said Pekka Lapinleimu, Executive Director of the Finnish Federation of the Hard of Hearing in his prize-giving speech. "Many accessibility features like vibrating phones, flashing displays, text messages, communicators, loopsets for T-coiled hearing aids, text-to-speech technology, handsfree solutions, audio-visual-tactile feedback systems and continuous work for better hearing aid compatibility are worth mentioning."

The Urpo Siirala medal is the highest recognition that the federation can give on the strength of major impact on the well being of the hard of hearing.

Nokia well-present in IFHOH World Congress

This year's main theme at the IFHOH World Congress was accessible communication. In the congress, along with the presentation on Voice Recognition held by Olli Viikki, Senior Technology Manager at Technology Platforms, Nokia had its own exhibition stand where congress visitors could test Nokia's solutions for the hard of hearing as well as get acquainted with a new prototype of hearing aid-compatible GSM mobile phone.

A poster "Hearing aids and cellular phones — benefit from an induction loop" made by Peeta Piiparinen, Design Engineer from the MP accessibility team, was also rewarded as the best poster at the congress. The poster was based on Nokia-sponsored research on the benefits of Nokia loopset usage for hearing aid users.

"The feedback from visitors has been remarkably good. Nokia's solutions and developmental work has also come up in several speeches and presentations during the congress." said Peeta.

A crying need

There are about 25 million hard of hearing people in Europe, and about half of them are using a hearing aid. Due to the ageing population, the numbers are expected to double by the year 2020. Using GSM and TDMA phones with a hearing aid is problematic due to the burst transmission mode used by these systems. If the sensitive components of the hearing aid are not protected, they pick up the transmission burst resulting an audible disturbance that makes using a mobile phone difficult or even impossible.

The MP Accessibility team works to further develop special solutions to ease mobile use and make them accessible for different kinds of special user groups. Nokia's first solution for hearing aid users is a loopset hands-free accessory. It enables a longer distance between the phone and the hearing aid thus easing the disturbance problem. The most recent version of the Nokia loopset, LPS-4, was launched in 2002.

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