It is 2:00 am. I am searching through my house to find the smoke alarm that is running out of battery. Why does it always seem to go off at 2:00 am?! This sound is familiar to many of us; however, most alerting devices (alarm clocks, smoke alarms, carbon monoxide detectors, weather monitors, etc.) have one thing in common: alerting users with a high-pitch auditory signal. This raises a significant concern. Patients who are deaf or are hard of hearing may not be able to hear an alerting signal unaided, which puts their lives at risk and can make them less independent.
Topic(s): Deaf, Hard-of-Hearing, safety