text/Wang Danyang photo/Respondent provided
September 25th is the 65th " International Day for the Deaf People ". In this world, there are countless voices that are concerned about. Babies are crying first, family care nagging, friends gathering, insects, birds, frogs in the fields...
However, in an inaudible world, how loud does love need to be heard?
For Tang Chen, a hearing-impaired elderly man who was tortured by "invisible disability" in the rural areas of Shaoguan, Guangdong, after ten years, through the domestic hearing aid donated by the "Tianlai Yinfa Care Fund" and supported by new AI technology, he once again heard the kind and clear voice of his son on the other end of his mobile phone, and heard the familiar sound of the three-stringed piano.
htmlOn the occasion of the "International Day of the Deaf" on September 25, Tencent Tianlai Action held its 2022 annual press conference, officially announcing the key achievements of Tianlai Action in the development of hearing impaired products, public welfare assistance, and production and research co-creation, and synchronizing the progress of key projects since the second anniversary of the launch of Tianlai Action."Sound has shapes, sounds have colors, and sounds have warmth."
00 million elderly people "hidden diseases"
According to statistics on "The Current Situation and Development Trends of Hearing Health in my country", about 120 million elderly people are gradually losing their hearing.
Time goes back. In the 30 years before retirement, Tang Chen, who was still a middle-aged man, has been working in the pump room of an aluminum factory in Shaoguan, Guangdong. The buzzing sound of power generation 24 hours a day, especially the noise of the rumbling noise during pumping is no less than that of pneumatic pick . The noise in the water pump room is very affordable. Many young people can't stand it after working for two or three years, but Tang Chen has worked for thirty years.
After retirement, Tang Chen didn't feel anything at first, but his hearing became worse and worse. He needed to speak loudly in his ear to hear it. A few years ago, my grandson bought him a hearing aid. Like the hearing aids worn by many rural elderly people, Tang Chen wore the amplifier priced at one or two hundred yuan. It has no noise resolution function. While amplifying the sound, the noise is also amplified, further aggravating the hearing loss of the elderly.
Even so, his desire to communicate with the world never stopped during the colorful days after retirement. When he was free, he would learn to play the three-string zither by relying on his fingering memory.
Like Tang Chen, many elderly people were forced to reduce effective communication with the outside world because they could not hear clearly, and gradually alienated from their relatives and friends.
According to the " World Hearing Report ", 65% of people over 60 years old worldwide experience a certain degree of hearing loss. Uninterventional hearing loss may prompt them to stay away from social life too early, lose their productivity, and lead to emotional and psychological abnormalities. After hearing loss, many elderly people are afraid of other people's opinions and are unwilling to communicate with others. Even if many people are by their side, they will still feel very lonely, develop cognitive degeneration, and even develop serious consequences such as cognitive impairment (commonly known as Alzheimer's ). Existing studies have found that the incidence of Alzheimer's disease in elderly people with mild, moderate and severe hearing loss is 2 times, 3 times and 5 times that of elderly people with normal hearing.
A survey found that in China, the proportion of elderly people wearing hearing aids is less than 7%, and it may be that only more than 4 million elderly people actually wear hearing aids. At the same time, compared with imported hearing aids that cost tens of thousands of yuan, most affordable domestic mid- and low-end hearing aids are difficult to meet expectations, which greatly affects the feelings and habits of the elderly to wear hearing aids.
From hearing to hearing clearly
Compared with oral health, visual impairment and other health problems, hearing impairment in the elderly is more like a familiar and invisible disability, which is more likely to be ignored.
. Hearing aids, as an important device to improve the hearing environment of the elderly, can effectively alleviate hearing impairment, tinnitus and other problems, and improve the quality of life of the elderly in their later years.
In order to help hearing-impaired elderly people like Tang Chen, improve the use effect of domestic hearing aids, and reduce the threshold for selecting hearing-impaired elderly people, Tencent Tianlai Laboratory has released a completely self-developed core algorithm solution for hearing-impaired elderly people, and took the lead in jointly developing products with domestic hearing aid manufacturer "Zhiting Technology" and launched the "public welfare assistance model" of Zhiting (Tencent Tianlai inside) hearing aids.
After technical verification, this hearing aid has greatly improved the comprehensive listening experience in multiple scenarios, increasing the clarity and intelligibility of voice in complex scenarios by more than 85%, and has three major technical advantages: "low latency, low power consumption, and good sound quality". At the same time, in order to solve the long-term troubles caused by hearing aids to those who are impaired due to "whistling", Tianlai Laboratory innovatively proposed a systematic solution for "whistling ". After repeated tests by users, the key performance of domestic hearing aids of 1,000 yuan can also be comparable to the level of imported hearing aids of 10,000 yuan.
At present, this Zhiting (Tencent Tianlai inside) hearing aid has been included in the "2022 Elderly Product Promotion Catalog" by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology. It will be promoted and applied as a high-quality elderly products in the future to help the development of the elderly cause.
Tencent Conference Tianlai Laboratory Director Shang Shidong said: "Tianlai Action Team has been thinking about how to further help hearing-impaired and hearing-impaired elderly people into the digital society through technology and Tencent's numerous platform resources. Now, by opening up Tianlai AI audio technology to domestic manufacturers, the user experience of domestic hearing aids has been effectively improved, and will further improve and improve technical details such as power consumption in the future."
data shows that since its inception in 2020, Tianlai Action has been aimed at the field of social responsibility for hearing impaired, and has opened the Tianlai Audio AI technology behind Tencent Conference for free. In conjunction with public welfare ecological partners, it has helped 4.46 million users to screen hearing level, help 351,000 Changting Wangka users improve voice calls and subtitles recognition effects, conduct verbal rehabilitation training for more than 11,000 hearing-impaired people and issue cochlear implant subsidies, etc., providing the best help for hearing-impaired groups to better integrate into the digital society.
"As an Internet technology company, Tencent has always adhered to one principle. Whether it is doing social welfare or practicing social responsibility, it is firmly based on technology, and closely combines Internet capabilities, digital technology capabilities and business capabilities to play a greater role, solve social problems, and do technology to be good." said Guo Kaitian, senior vice president of Tencent Group and chairman of Tencent Charity Foundation .
Let Ai Ting Together
, including Tang Chen, based on the "Tianlai Silver Care Fund", Tencent has created and jointly built cooperation with governments, auxiliary listening equipment manufacturers, and public welfare institutions. Tianlai Action has explored a long-term charity model for the linkage of "government, enterprise and public" for the public welfare assistance of hearing impaired elderly people. The first period is to donate Zhiting (Tencent Tianlai inside) hearing aids to 4,500 hearing impaired elderly people in Shaoguan html.
Respect my elders and others' old age. In order to help more hearing-impaired elderly people in need, Tencent Charity Foundation, Tencent SSV Silver Technology Laboratory, Tencent Conference Tianlai Laboratory, and Zhiting Technology also jointly launched the "Buy One Donate One" public welfare assistance activity for Zhiting (Tencent Tianlai Inside) hearing aid. During the pre-sale period, for each hearing aid sold by Zhiting (Tencent Tianlai inside) is sold, Tencent will donate a hearing aid for free to hearing-impaired elderly people in remote mountainous areas. This is also another charity measure in the field of hearing impairment relief after the "Tencent Tianlai Silver Care Fund" has followed the Shaoguan rescue operation.
In addition, in order to further improve the elderly's attention to hearing health and intervene in advance in hearing loss problems as soon as possible, in terms of AI-enabled hearing self-testing and hearing screening, Tencent Yinfa Technology Laboratory and Tencent Conference Tianlai Laboratory jointly released the first integrated mini program in China that integrates hearing screening to rehabilitation training - "Tencent Yinfa Hearing Health Mini Program", which mainly aims at the elderly and their families, providing tools and information services for the entire process from hearing screening to rehabilitation training.
Member of the Party Leadership Group of the National Aging Office and Vice President of the Chinese Aging Association Xiao Caiwei said: "Tianlai Action has received widespread attention from all walks of life, and has also made great progress in assisted hearing equipment, public welfare assistance, etc., and has closely integrated humanistic value with cutting-edge technology. I hope that more enterprises and social forces will pay attention to aging issues and participate in the construction of aging undertakings, give full play to the technological power of big data and artificial intelligence , continuously improve the research and development capabilities of smart health care technology, enrich the types of aging technology products, and allow the elderly to enjoy the "digital dividend" equally, and help the elderly to help Achieve the goal of 'healthy aging' in my country. "
As the ambassador of Tianlai Charity Action and singer Zhoushen sang: "Let's amplify love and make the sound smaller. How loud should love be in an inaudible world? It can be very small or large. It is in our hearts, full of ears, and it is full of heavenly sounds."
Data says about half of the hearing loss of 75 years old + elderly people
According to the first domestic research report on social issues for hearing impairment in the elderly in 2022, about one-third of the elderly people over 65 years old have moderate hearing loss, and this number among the elderly over 75 years old has increased to about 1/2. However, the current usage rate of hearing aids is only 5% to 10% in China. The slow progress of the disease, insufficient self-adjustment, relies on family support, and is unwilling to accept the use of hearing aids, are common characteristics of hearing-impaired elderly people in China. In the consciousness of most people, the "inability to hear" and "inability to hear" of the elderly are regarded as natural and normal things. (For more news, please follow Yangchengpai pai.ycwb.com)
source | Yangcheng Evening News·Yangchengpai
Editor | Shen Zhao
