“He admitted his mistakes.” Castro Valley first-grader Alicia Lyding is deaf and uses hearing aids. At school she uses a device called a Phonak, which attaches to her hearing aids and helps her hear her teacher clearly. When her elementary school was burglarized earlier this month, the...
Company aims to distribute them worldwide at no charge. An emerging Lego product may revolutionize how blind children learn braille and encourage more interactive play with other kids, ABC News reports. Although about 700,000 children and young adults in the United States have a vision disability,...
Playwright opened the stage for deaf actors. Mark Medoff, author of the Tony Award-winning play Children of a Lesser God, died Tuesday at his home in Las Cruces, N.M., at the age of 79, National Public Radio reports. Medoff, who wrote 30 plays, is best known for the groundbreaking Children of a...
Co-pilots had to take over. Two Cathay Pacific Airways captains lost their eyesight on separate flights earlier this year, Today Online reports. Their co-pilots had to take command of their aircraft and issue urgent calls to air traffic control before landing safely. One captain was flying an...
Celebrated therapy dog was rescued from the roadside 14 years ago. A Memphis Fire Department dalmatian took her final ride on Monday, WMC TV reports. At the age of 14 years, Lottie Dot’s health was deteriorating. On Friday afternoon, the department gave the dog one final ride as she was...
It’s a first for a visually impaired person. Mitsuhiro Iwamoto, who is blind, completed the 8,700-mile trip across the Pacific with the help of a sighted navigator, BBC News reports. He left California on February 24 with Doug Smith, an American navigator who assisted him, and his...
Trumpets in ‘Die Walkure’ were as loud as a jet engine. London’s Royal Opera House has lost an appeal over the life-changing hearing damage caused to a viola player at a rehearsal of Wagner’s ‘Die Walkure,’ BBC News reports. The Court of Appeal ruled...
World first procedure used 3D-printed middle ear bones. A pioneering surgical procedure using 3D-printed middle ear bones may be the answer to conductive hearing loss, the South African government has announced. The procedure was developed by Professor Mashudu Tshifularo and his team at the...
Tiny insects fed on her tears. After a Taiwanese woman came in for treatment of a swollen eye, doctors were shocked to find four tiny bees living under her left eyelid, CNN reports. The insects, known as sweat bees, are 3 to 4 millimeters (0.12-0.16 inches) in length, according to CNN affiliate...
University is accused of failure to provide closed captioning of its online content. After years of motions and hearings, a 2015 lawsuit against Harvard will move forward in federal court, the Harvard Crimson reports. The suit alleges that the school failed to provide closed captions for its...
It’s not an obvious disability. Educator Kathryn Roe lost her hearing as an adult. Writing for the website The Mighty, she explains what it’s like to live with a disability that’s not always obvious: For many people, disabilities are something visible, or something a teacher...
Products sold online range from expensive electronic devices to herbal teas. Banned “vision-recovering” products are still being misleadingly advertised and sold online in China, Sixth Tone reports. Several central government ministries issued a notice to ban such disingenuous wares a week...