Abstract
The two lectures on this topic provide a practical guide to devices and services that will improve communication abilities of hearing impaired, visually impaired and speech/mobility impaired persons. For instance, hearing impaired persons can benefit from amplified telephones, assistive listening devices, and visual signalling and alerting devices, visually impaired persons from speech automatically translated to braille. The first lecture concerns the use of speech synthesis and speech recognition applications in daily life, as well as other aids for the hearing impaired, visually impaired, and speech/mobility impaired persons (e.g. tactile sensory aids, word prediction programs). The second lecture focusses on the hearing impaired only. After a brief introduction on the auditory system and hearing loss, the possibilities of hearing aids and cochlear implants are discussed in detail, together with different ways of assessing speech perception performance.