Announcements

National Deaf Children’s Society (NDCS) partnered with Peppa Pig to introduce a new storyline featuring a deaf character. In upcoming episodes, Peppa’s younger brother George is revealed to be moderately deaf in one ear and is fitted with a hearing aid. NDCS worked closely with the show’s producers to accurately and authentically portray childhood hearing loss, including the process of hearing…

The 2026 Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering was awarded to nine engineers for their groundbreaking design and development of modern neural interfaces that restore human function. The group includes Graeme Clark , Erwin Hochmair , Ingeborg Hochmair , Blake Wilson , John Donoghue , Alim Louis Benabid , Pierre Pollak , Jocelyne Bloch and Grégoire Courtine . Their collective work spans cochlear…

A proposed bill called the Veterans Hearing Aid Improvement Act would make it easier for veterans with mild to moderate hearing loss to get over-the-counter (OTC) hearing aids through the Department of Veterans Affairs, without needing a prescription or repeated audiologist fittings. The legislation would create a two-year pilot program at several VA medical facilities, allowing veterans receive…

A recent preprint surveyed adults (middle-aged and older) in Canada about how much they know regarding connections between hearing loss, hearing aids, and brain health such as dementia or cognitive decline, and whether that awareness relates to their behavior toward hearing care. Respondents answered questions about whether they had heard that untreated hearing loss might be linked with cognitive…

Older adults in Romania with moderate to severe sensorineural hearing loss showed meaningful benefits from hearing aid adoption compared with peers who declined amplification. Researchers enrolled 201 adults aged about 50 to 92 and compared those who chose hearing aids to those who did not. Participants completed standard hearing tests and questionnaires that measure perceived hearing difficulty,…

In a recent study, adults with cochlear implants completed the Montreal Cognitive Assessment, a brief screening tool commonly used to assess memory, attention, and executive function. Their speech recognition in noise was then measured at longer-term follow-ups after implantation. The findings showed that higher Montreal Cognitive Assessment scores were linked to better speech-in-noise performance…

The Frankfurt Airport started a trial of Auracast™ broadcast audio, a Bluetooth Audio technology that streams gate announcements directly to passengers’ own devices like hearing aids, earbuds, or headphones, making it the first airport globally to do so. The system is live at two gates in Terminal 1 and helps travelers with hearing loss hear key information clearly without relying on loudspeaker…

Starkey announced new connectivity enhancements for its Omega AI hearing technology platform, adding three major features to improve how users connect and communicate. The company claims that the Auracast assistant lets any smartphone with the My Starkey app tune into Auracast broadcasts and stream audio straight to users’ hearing aids, with controls for volume and language. Starkey claims that…

The European Federation of Hard of Hearing People (EFHOH), with partners including the European Association of Hearing Aid Professionals and Thomas More University of Applied Sciences, is running an anonymous survey on how hearing loss affects people at work and what supports empowerment and inclusion. Responses help identify barriers and solutions for inclusive workplaces. The survey is available…

A preprint reports findings from an observational analysis using UK Biobank data to examine the relationship between hearing outcomes and physical activity measured through wrist-worn accelerometers. The study uses data from roughly 79,000 adults aged 39 to 70, combining objective sensor-based activity metrics with self-reported hearing difficulty and performance on a speech-in-noise test.…