ICAAT stands for the Industry-Consumer Alliance for Accessible Technology. ICAAT’s goal is to bring together technology developers with consumers who have hearing loss to create and inspire more accessible, innovative, and responsive technologies. ICAAT is a first-of-its-kind online community of consumers with hearing loss and industry. You can sign up for free and join ICAAT’s Tech Forum to access and participate in discussions about a wide range of technology topics and issues, explore and share resources, and find out about technology-related events.

Anyone interested in our mission to ensure that technology meets the needs of people who have hearing loss or are Deaf should consider joining ICAAT. Whether you are a consumer with hearing loss, a Deaf consumer, a consumer advocate or ally, or an industry professional or researcher designing and developing hearing assistive technology or mainstream consumer electronics, you are welcome here!

Consumers can get involved by:

• Joining the Tech Forum, where you can discuss topics of interest to you, find related resources, and learn about technology-related events.
• Participating in Co-Design Connect, where you can collaborate with technology developers on market research, product testing, product literature reviews, and product reviews.

Industry can get involved by:

• Recruiting through Co-Design Connect to find participants for market research, product testing and reviews, designing and refining assistive technology and consumer electronics as you move forward to market.
• Joining the Tech Forum, where you can participate in discussion groups to inform and assist you in identifying market opportunities, share relevant resources, and post information about upcoming live or online industry events.

The development of ICAAT was a collaboration between Gallaudet University, the American Institutes for Research, and the Hearing Loss Association of America.

The contents of this site were developed under a grant from the National Institute on Disability, Independent Living, and Rehabilitation Research (NIDILRR), grant number 90REGE0013). NIDILRR is a Center within the Administration for Community Living (ACL), Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). The contents of this site do not necessarily represent the policy of NIDILRR, ACL, HHS, and you should not assume endorsement by the Federal Government.

Creating an account is free and easy! Click here and follow the prompts to complete the appropriate fields. Other than the required fields, you are welcome to share as much as you feel comfortable in the account profile. Please note that Industry accounts will be reviewed by the Hearing Loss Association of America. Welcome to ICAAT!

Your welcome message may be in the spam folder of your email account rather than your inbox. Check your spam folder for a message from Alliance for Access <noreply@allianceforaccess.org> and a subject line that reads “Welcome to ICAAT’s Tech Forum.”

If you do not find a welcome message in either your inbox or spam folders, Contact Us and let us know you are having a “Problem with log-in or accessing the website.” Mention in your message that you did not receive a welcome message and you checked both the inbox and spam folders of your email account.

You must join ICAAT's Tech Forum to participate in Co-Design Connect. There is no cost to join the Tech Forum community. 

• For consumers: You can register for an account here.
• For industry: Individuals at a company can register for an account here. The Hearing Loss Association of America will review industry account requests. ICAAT expects that vetted company representatives participating in Co-Design Connect will conduct themselves with the highest ethical standards and use the best practices we've provided here when engaging with consumers with hearing loss or Deaf consumers.

On the User Stories page, you will find an icon on the right-hand side of the page that says “Contribute a Story.” Click the icon or go to the Contact Us page. You will need to provide your name, an email address so we can contact you, and the topic of your suggested story. We review user story submissions on a quarterly basis.

We will contact you at the email you provided when contributing a story idea. Assuming the topic or experience is not already a user story, we will ask you to provide a full story (max. 800 words). We will edit the story to fit the website style and may contact you in follow up if we have any questions. Submissions should not include mention of any particular personally identifying information, technology brands, device models or service providers. User stories are selected by the ICAAT team based on topic and relevance.