What We Do

The Rehabilitation Engineering Research Center (RERC) on Hearing Enhancement is a national project funded by the United States Department of Education, National Institute on Disability and Rehabilitation Research (NIDRR) in the Office of Special Education and Rehabilitation Services (OSERS). The objective of the project is to conduct research programs that promote technological solutions to problems confronting people who are hard of hearing.

The RERC on Hearing Enhancement addresses accessibility problems of hard-of-hearing individuals by developing and evaluating cost-effective technological aids for the various groups of people with hearing loss according to their needs (e.g. people with moderate hearing losses, people with severe or profound hearing losses, young children, older adults and people with both vision and hearing loss).

The current RERC Grant is a five-year award, which runs from October 2003 – September 2008.

The RERC is a partnership between Gallaudet University and the New York University School of Medicine.

The RERC has 8 main projects, each of which conducts one or more sub-projects.

• To develop and evaluate technological solutions to problems confronting people with hearing loss.
• to develop systems for the exchange of technical and engineering information
• to improve the distribution of assistive devices and equipment to individuals with hearing loss
• to provide training in rehabilitation engineering research
• to develop training materials explaining the use of new technology for service providers and consumers with various types of impairments.
• to evaluate its own products and those of other Centers, and to develop cooperative arrangements with the private sector.