Assistive Listening Knowledge Base
  • Paper (research brief reporting a user survey)

User Needs: Assistive Listening Systems in Public Venues for Hearing Aid Users (Research Brief 2013, No. 3)

From https://assistivelisteningknowledgebase.org/evidence/wireless-rerc-2013/ · record checked 14 October 2026

  • Rehabilitation Engineering Research Center for Wireless Technologies (Wireless RERC)
  • Wireless RERC (archive hosted by the Georgia Institute of Technology)

Government (US Department of Education, National Institute on Disability and Rehabilitation Research, grant H133E110002; the questionnaire was designed as a market-needs study for an app-based assistive listening system being developed with Wireless RERC support)

Summary

A short survey of 180 people with hearing loss on how often venues provide assistive listening, how often they use it and how satisfied they are, framed around interest in a phone-app alternative.

Key findings

  • Table 8 (p. 4) separates system-user satisfaction into very satisfied 7%, somewhat satisfied 56%, somewhat unsatisfied 24% and very unsatisfied 13%; the subgroup count is not printed.
  • Tables 9-10 (p. 4) place hypothetical app use after a question about using the smartphone's built-in microphone as a local amplifier. Table 10 gives yes 86% and no 14%; the text identifies smartphone users but supplies no subgroup count. This context does not establish demand for venue Wi-Fi streaming or Auracast.
  • 180 people with hearing loss answered between 22 January and 1 April 2013, recruited by convenience sampling through the RERC's consumer network, website and social media, and organisations including the National Association of the Deaf and the Hearing Loss Association of America.
  • 66% said assistive listening is rarely provided at the public events they attend, 27% sometimes and 7% often.
  • Table 7 (p. 4) asks whether respondents use an assistive listening system when it is available: 36% said often, 34% sometimes and 30% never. It gives no item-level respondent count; the 180 respondents reported in the Methodology (pp. 1-2) are the overall survey sample.
  • Of those who use it, 63% were very or somewhat satisfied (56% only somewhat) and 37% somewhat or very unsatisfied.
  • 86% of smartphone users said they would use an assistive listening app if one existed; 11% had ever used their phone as an amplifier at a meeting or event.

Limits

Small convenience sample; the authors say the questionnaire was short and that a larger, more detailed study is needed. It does not ask which technology venues used, so it cannot compare loops, FM, infrared or others. It was designed to test demand for an app-based system the RERC was supporting, which may have shaped the questions. Data from 2013, before Auracast.

Read the original

wirelessrercarchive.gatech.edu/sites/default/files/publications/Research%20Brief_Survey_Assistive%20Listening%20Services_2013-08-01.pdf

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Cited in

Cite this source

Rehabilitation Engineering Research Center for Wireless Technologies (Wireless RERC). User Needs: Assistive Listening Systems in Public Venues for Hearing Aid Users (Research Brief 2013, No. 3). Wireless RERC (archive hosted by the Georgia Institute of Technology). 1 August 2013. https://wirelessrercarchive.gatech.edu/sites/default/files/publications/Research%20Brief_Survey_Assistive%20Listening%20Services_2013-08-01.pdf (accessed 14 October 2026).

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