For more than a decade, whenever 26-year-old Lauren Fox watched live music, she would focus on the vibrations of one instrument.
“I would just dance following the drumbeat because that was the only part [of the music] I could really connect to,” says Lauren, who is a Deaf person.
Lauren Fox, who is a Deaf person, says a haptic vest changed the way she experienced live music.(Supplied: Lauren Fox (composite image))
So earlier this year when Lauren attended a festival with a haptic vest, a wearable device that transmits different sounds as vibrations on the skin, it wasn’t a strange experience.
But she says it was a connection to music she’d never had before.
“It’s fantastic that you can feel each individual instrument,” she says.
“You can feel the whole body pumping. It’s really difficult to explain.”
Haptic technology is not new; since the 1990s, it’s been used as a tool for interpreting sound.
But in recent years, technological advancements have resulted in awave of haptic devices, creating new ways for people to experience sound.
More accessible and inclusive
Haptic technology provides users with physical stimuli, like vibration or motion. The tactile feedback provides an experience that can be immersive or more realistic.
Chances are you’ve been interacting with haptic technology for years. When you type on a smartphone and feel that clicking and buzzing, that’s haptic feedback. The same goes for if you’ve felt a video game controller tremble in your hand, or a virtual reality suit vibrate against your skin.
Video game innovations have sped up the development of more compact, accessible haptic devices.(Getty: David Paul Morris/Bloomberg)
But this technology can also be used to communicate different sounds, says University of Southampton senior research fellow Mark Fletcher, who studies haptic technology and hearing loss.
“Your brain is very, very flexible and it likes to link information together to build its model of the world,” he tells ABC RN’s Sunday Extra.
Through haptic feedback, our brains can create patterns that connect certain vibrations at different locations of our bodies with a specific sound.
Haptic devices have existed since the 1970s, popularised in part through the video game industry, but they have been used in sound perception for decades.
Dr Fletcher says since the 1990s, haptic technology has been used clinically to assist in sound perception, but accessibility has long been an issue.
Previously, in order to deliver stimulation across someone’s body, large full-body suits were required.
“The problem people hit was that — you can imagine especially in older people — putting on a big suit like that is not something they’re necessarily going to want to do every day,” Dr Fletcher says.
But in recent years, innovations in haptic technology, partially driven by tech industries, have helped make more compact and accessible devices available for the public.
More and more Australian live events are offering haptic vests, like this one, to patrons who are Deaf or hard of hearing.(Supplied: The Newmarket Collective)
These advancements have allowed for an emerging haptic technology market.
David Grant, a 31-year-old actor and person who is Deaf, was given the opportunity to wear a haptic vest earlier this year to take in music and film.
He says until that moment he’d never understood why people cried during films.
“When I had a haptic [vest] on, I started to understand more [about] how music works on a movie or TV show,” he says.
The technology is increasingly being used with live performances.
Earlier this year, the accessible festival Ability Fest made haptic devices available to those attending its Melbourne-based event.
“People love this — the amazing amount of detail they can get out of the vibrations of the vest,” says Kylie Davies, the director of creative production company The Newmarket Collective, which began supplying haptic vests to various Australian events this year.
Paul Rosenberg is the co-director and “director of fun” at Party Higher, a silent disco company that also entered the haptic device market earlier this year.
He says the technology is “making things more inclusive and accessible”.
“It’s taking … a dance experience to another whole level where you can feel the vibrations through you, rather than having to stand next to a giant speaker … to feel that vibration.”
Potential for speech perception
Dr Fletcher believes haptic technology could have further applications, including in communicating speech to people who are Deaf or hard of hearing.
His research has considered the potential of haptic technology in assisting speech perceptions, such as using wristbands to deliver stimuliacross multiple frequencies to experience the sound of speech.
Expert Mark Fletcher says haptic technology could have multiple applications.(Supplied: Party Higher)
Dr Fletcher says that while there are existing effective hearing aid technologies, like the cochlear implant, they aren’t always accessible.
“There’s a huge population of people across the world who can’t access cochlear implants because they have to be implanted. You need quite sophisticated healthcare infrastructure.”
He says haptic devices, by contrast, could be a more accessible option as they don’t require “any advanced healthcare infrastructure” and are relatively low-cost to manufacture.
In Australia, devices like hearing aids and cochlear implants are available and funded by both state and federal bodies, but adult uptake is low.
Government data has previously estimated only 11 per cent of adults eligible for a cochlear implant have received one.
In Australia, only 11 per cent of adults eligible for a cochlear implant have had one implanted.(ABC News: Brendan Esposito)
“It’s a real problem, when you think about the impact of having a severe to profound hearing loss,” says Julia Sarant, audiologist and head of the University of Melbourne’s Hearing Loss and Cognition Program.
Dr Sarant is currently leading a systematic review of barriers to cochlear implants in Australia.
“There are misconceptions about the benefits of cochlear implants. Nobody really knows what that will do for them … And most people think it costs [them] a lot of money,” she says.
Stigma and fear of surgery are other factors impacting uptake of the devices.
‘It’s such a connection’
Currently, haptic technology is costly, particularly for widespread implementation.
“The technology is quite expensive per vest,” Rosenberg says.
He says they’re a “long-term investment”, costing his company between $600 to $800 per vest. “And we’re talking about hundreds of vests — it becomes expensive.”
But for those like Lauren who have tried haptic technology, it is an exciting potential option.
She says the technology has helped give her a greater connection to music.
“Within the last five years, because having Auslan interpreters at events is becoming more prevalent … more events are accessible to us. But now having the haptic vest as well, it makes it far more accessible than it was,” she says.
“It’s such a connection, and it really puts us Deaf audience members on an equal footing with the hearing audience.”
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