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How Smart Light Technology can Help People with Hearing Loss

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As homes become smarter and technology advances there are now great options and ways smart lighting can link with other home devices to help the deaf and hard of hearing.

Lights can act as visual signs and notifications for people with hearing loss and a great way to combine this with other technology to help with everyday tasks or notifcations.

Alerting lighting for the Deaf and hearing impaired

Here is a list of how smart lighting can be combined with other technology to create visual signs and signals:

  • Smoke alarm
  • Smart doorbell
  • Motion detector
  • Incoming phone calls

Receiving alerts from your smart lights

Using your smart lights such as Hue bulbs, you can have these turn a specific color to notify you of something, for example:

  • All your lights turn red if there is a fire
  • Your lights flash blue if there is an incoming call on your phone
  • The lights flash green if your ring doorbell is pressed

Technology and app Visualfy connects your smart devices at home to make them user friendly and work together to help users with hearing loss.

Visualfy Home technology is a device that can alert you on the system, on your phone, Smartwatch, TV, Philips Hue light, or on any connected device you have chosen. It uses detectors as well as working with other smart products in the home. 

Flashing Hue Lights when Ring Doorbell pressed

These two are peerage devices using separate technology, Hue lights uses Zigbee as its connection while Ring uses wifi, however there is a way to allow the two to connect and work together. 

Using IFTTT

IFTTT (an acronym for If This Then That) has many different settings and features to do cool things with your hue lights and other smart devices. It can create and set different routines and settings linking and working with different smart devices, such as Philips Hue and the Ring doorbell. 

There are lots of different applets that you can choose from, and for this there is one to set your lights to flash and blink when the doorbell is pressed or motion is detected from the ring doorbell camera.

IFTTT applets that you can use include:

There are many ways an IFTTT network can benefit people with hearing loss, from blinking when your doorbell is pressed, to changing the color of your lights if your smoke alarm is sounded, to receiving a call or being notified on your smart phone. 

Convo Light App for Incoming Call Light alerts 

The Convo Lights app is designed to use philips hue lights to notify deaf people of phone calls and other audible signals that they could normally miss.

The app from Convo, helps create personalised ‘ringtones’ of light to identify incoming callers, and adjust the brightness in a room to make sign language easier to see onscreen.

Convo provides Video Relay Services (VRS), which allow deaf people to communicate over the phone with hearing people in real time via a sign language interpreter. The new app seamlessly integrates the connected lighting features of Philips Hue with Convo Mobile VRS to offer life-enriching functions that were previously unavailable for the deaf community:

  • Light alerts that enable people to see incoming video calls through light
  • Personalized light ringtones and differentiation between callers
  • Light notifications for missed calls so they stay better connected
  • Optimum lighting for deaf people to understand and be understood by their sign language interpreter

As technology advances there are lots of smart home devices that make it easier and better for people who have hearing loss, settings and devices that can be easily installed and set up in your home and also set to work for you in a way that helps and benefits you at home. 


Founder & Editor

Mike is the founder of Hue Home Lighting, a huge Hue fan with far too many lights, covering home and garden. A smart home gadget addict and also enjoys the odd bit of DIY

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