Sonic Innovations Official Hearing Aid of the VA

Salt Lake City — Sonic Innovations has announced it has been selected to supply hearing aids to the U.S. Dept. of Veterans Affairs (VA) beginning Nov. 1. According to industry data from the Hearing Industry Association, the VA represents approximately 18% of the market for hearing aids and experienced unit growth of more than 29% for the three months ended June 30, 2009, compared to the same period of 2008.

In response to the contract award, Sonic Innovations CEO Sam Westover said, “Winning the VA contract is a significant opportunity for Sonic. It allows us to provide hearing care to the single largest purchaser of hearing aids in North America.” According to contract documents, the VA anticipates purchasing from the qualified suppliers approximately 430,000 hearing aids in first year of the contract, with steady growth in volume over the following four years.

Westover indicated this award was particularly gratifying because it provided Sonic another opportunity to support the men and women of the military. “As a U.S. company, we are excited to be able to provide our technologically advanced hearing aids to our U.S. veterans. Hearing damage is the leading disability being faced by our returning veterans, and we are looking forward to the opportunity to serve them,” Westover said.

Sonic submitted its proposal to the VA in response to a request for proposal issued earlier this year. Sonic was successful in receiving an award in each of the categories in which it bid, allowing it to sell its custom, BTE and RIC products through the VA. The contract award from the VA is a one-year contract with four one-year extension options. Sonic anticipates participating on the contract for the entire five years.

AT&T Premieres Real Time IM Relay for Customers With Hearing and Speech Loss

DALLAS, Sept. 28 --For people with hearing and speech loss, communicating with callers who can speak and hear just went real time, thanks to AT&T and AOL's AIM instant messaging service. Customers using AT&T IM Relay services now have a new, faster feature at their fingertips: AT&T Real Time IM. AT&T is the first and only provider to offer the new real time feature -- offering more than 31 million people with hearing and speech loss, nationwide, a more immediate way to communicate with standard telephone users.

Users log in to a specialized AIM interface that works with an Internet connection on a PC and on many wireless devices. A specially-trained relay operator reads IMs to hearing callers and types IMs which are displayed -- in real time -- to the end user. The new service is offered at no additional charge to customers who register with AT&T Relay Services.

With the new real time IM feature, instead of waiting for the relay operator to type a full phrase or sentence, IM users can see the text messages they are receiving, word-by-word as they are typed -- making conversations feel more like calls experienced by hearing customers.

"To hearing users, this may sound like a trivial enhancement," said Claude Stout, Executive Director, TDI. "But for many callers with hearing or speech disabilities, this creates a wireless and online communications experience that is much closer to what hearing people encounter when talking with others on the phone. TDI applauds such collaboration between industry players that results in greater functional equivalency for deaf and hard of hearing consumers."