Photo Above - Dr. Vinton G. Cerf interviewed by Alessandro Sorbello CEO and Founder of New Realm Media
Question: “ ‘Hear and Say WorldWide’ is an organisation which you are clearly passionate about, can you tell us a little about how you came to be involved with Dimity and the ‘Hear and Say Centre.’
Dr Vinton G. Cerf : Dimity came to our family by way of the audio verbal international program for teaching people how to listen and how to hear. My wife Sigrid is a double Cochlear Ear implantee, she had her first implant in 1996 and a second one last year in 2006 she was very active in this audio verbal international program because she recognize that it's not just a question of the technology it's a question of learning how to use it. It’s a question of teaching audiologists and speech pathologist and others who deal with hearing impairments, how to help someone who is using one of these assisted techniques, whether its hearing aids or cochlear ear implants or other types of techniques how to use those to their advantage.
And so on top all the basic technologies which are stunning and spectacular in their nature, in fact I should say that Graham Clark, the inventor or the cochlear ear implant is here today, he gave a fabulous presentation about how the technology works and what some of the future potentials are for neuro-electronic interfaces in addition to hearing repair of optical impairments and the possibility even of spinal implants to overcome paraplegia and quadriplegia and so on. So these things are all easily predictable within the state of the art of the development of technology, but unless you actually understand how to use this and how to augment it, you won’t get the full effect. And so Hear and Say Centre here in Brisbane are going international and that's what ‘Hear and Say WorldWide’ is all about.
I'm feeling a little funny about opening this particular press conference because I bear no responsibility and no credit for any of the work that the Hear and Say Centres do, I'm a beneficiary in some direct and indirect way.
Children of course are very, very important as a focus for the Hear and Say Centres, the earlier that one can intervene either with hearing aids with cochlear implants the more likely it is that the child will learn to hear normally and to speak normally in the same way that those of us who don't have a hearing impairments have learned.
So intervention is now technically possible as early as six months but of course you have to know that the child needs the intervention and so early detection is absolutely critical to this whole process.
But perhaps even more important is the training program that helps professionals to understand how to perform the early intervention, how to use the technology and how to help children and their parents learn to adapt and make use of these techniques.
My wife pioneered a number of uses of the cochlear ear implant, because she didn't have any help, she just invented ways of using these things more effectively. So as soon as she got her implant ten years ago, she phoned the library, phoned the library, hadn't used the telephone for 53 years right.
So she's on the telephone talking to the library saying "I'd like to sign up for recorded books for the blind" and she wanted to hear words pronounced that she hadn't heard before she could read them but she didn't know what they sounded like.
So the library said 'what's your name and address and phone number' and then they said you're blind aren't you? And she said “no I'm deaf” so there was this long pause while they were trying to figure out, well how is this is going to work. In the end she has acquired a variety of different additional devices like FM transmitters and receivers that she would use in a large auditorium, optical receivers that she can use in a movie theatre that are transmitting the soundtrack over an infrared signal that you can pick up and then plug directly into a speech processor or a head set.
She carries patch cords so that when she's in an airplane she can plug directly into the armrest and hear only the audio from the movie and not the screaming kids that are in the seat next to her.
So she has been very, very active in using these technologies and the way I see Dimity's work in the ‘Hear and Say Centre’ is to train our professionals to train the implantee’s and hearing aid users to make better effective use of that technology.
Now I think before we get to more questions about this that committee should have an opportunity to tell you about her passion and the scope of the ‘Hear and Say WorldWide’.
So Dimity can I ask you to tell our friends here in the press a little bit more about it.