Design and development of a mobile application for deaf and hard-of-hearing persons to create sound awareness

Iota ndividuals who are deaf and have difficulty in hearing (DHH) often experience varying degrees of hearing loss, making it difficult for them to speak in many situations. Studies have shown that these individuals often have lower levels of social involvement, job opportunities, and educational attainment compared to their hearing counterparts. Therefore, adopting technology is obligatory to help these persons minimize the gap in communication by offering effective education, awareness of sound, and reintegration into society. Smartphones contribute to reducing the burden on the DHH by adopting a vast array of applications that assist in several aspects, such as education and social communication. In this paper, we developed AsEar, a mobile application that detects sound around the DHH. Consequently, they can communicate by sending a sound link to their relatives or friends via social networking sites (SNSs) or mobile instant messengers (MIMs). Thus, their family and/or friends can listen and tell them about its nature. Results from this study prove that the majority of participants gave favorable feedback on usability and the idea of involving hearing people as mediators to identify the nature of the sound-detected. In addition, DHH individuals welcome their friends and relatives to learn sign language. Moreover, the majority of the participants reported that the AsEar app encourages them to communicate with hearing people on SNSs and MIMs.