Seeing EyePhone: Could Your Phone Be Your Service Animal?

iPhone App developers, take note: for the first time in awhile, I’ve found a situation where I can’t say, “there’s an app for that!” and I need one.

Have you ever found yourself in a situation when you simply didn’t hear something, such as the kettle whistling? or the water running because the TV was too loud, or there were screaming kids? It happens to everyone, whether or not you’re deaf. These are situations that can have negative effects if unattended. In this post, I’m going to explore the possibility of our mobile devices being able to provide us with essential notification of environmental sounds before things get messy–or burnt.

The Dangers of a “Quiet Morning.”

I like to start off my day with a quiet morning. Literally. As I drink a cup or two of coffee and read the print newspaper and digital news, my processors arenot on yet. (It’s a great perk of being deaf!) I decided this morning that for breakfast I would hard-boil an egg to have along with some fruit. While my egg was boiling in the kitchen, I was back in the den reading up on the news …30 minutes later, a terrible sulphur-smell wafts into the den. “My hard-boiled egg!” I thought to myself as I jumped off the couch to run into the kitchen. Indeed. it was more than done. All the water absorbed, the egg cracked as if it were about to explode, and the saucepan was just about ruined. It was an image that, as my friend commented on Twitter, looked like one from of the “This is Your Brain on Drugs” anti-narcotics PSA campaigns.

“Consider a Hearing Service Dog?”

I pretty soon recalled that my dad suggested upon graduating college several years ago that I should get a hearing service dog. He was understandably concerned that I may be in alone in a house and not hear pretty essential environmental sounds, such as:

• a kettle whistling;
• smoke alarms;
• running faucet;
• oven buzzer;
• doors opening & shutting; or
• a doorbell.

A hearing dog, he’d point out, would somehow alert me when one of those sounds came up by way of tapping me on the arm with its paw. I’d dismissed that suggestion citing that I didn’t need a hearing dog for when my processors were on (which is most of the waking hours) and I could follow along just fine. It would just be the times when I didn’t have them on when a hearing dog would be helpful. But if you know me, such as my dog-owning roommate, I have virtually NO DISCIPLINE when it comes to dogs. (I consistently let my roommate’s dog politely beg. She’s just too sweet for me to “shoo” away.) With that said, I’d feared that the lack of discipline, consistency and thousands of dollars in service-animal training would go down the drain within days, so I thanked my dad for the suggestion and said, “not for me.”

Mobile Devices-turned-Service Animals?

Ever since then, there have been instances when I’ve said, “Well… A hearing dog would’ve been nice to have just now!” It dawned on me this morning as I cleaned up my mess that perhaps our mobile devices could provide us with similar notification mechanisms. The hearing dogs are trained to repsond to a specific sound pattern, and since they obviously can’t talk, they lead the deaf partner to the source of the sound. I can envision a buzzing notification with the text, “Kettle Whistling” on the top – as in the mockup image to the right.  If our mobile devices can instantly identify songs played over the radio or TV through mobile applications such as Shazam, then surely our mobile devices (iPhones, Android-devices) can eventually, by way of an application or operating system feature, could recognize environmental sounds and provide a unique vibrating pattern and text to alert the deaf individual.

To be clear, service animals provide an incredible variety of services beyond alerting their lucky owners to boiling kettles and ringing doorbells. I’m not suggesting anything should replace them! But, for those of us looking for elements of that remarkable service, the phones in our hands could offer an answer. You develop it, I’ll test it! And really, my pots and pans will thank you.