“A bed shaker which goes under the mattress and vibrates the bed in an intermittent pattern awakening the sleeper to an emergency” Retrieved from http://www.safeawake.com/Adults%20with%20Varying%20Hearing%20Levels.html .
Published in Chapter:
Empirical Study Using Alternative Early Warning Systems to Address Fire in the Homes of Deaf or Hard-of-Hearing Individuals
Valerie C. Bryan (Florida Atlantic University, USA), Gerri Penney (Palm Beach County Fire Rescue, USA), Lisa Andrews (Delray Medical Center, USA), and Marianne Robin Russo (Florida Atlantic University, USA)
Copyright: © 2014
|Pages: 13
DOI: 10.4018/978-1-4666-6046-5.ch028
Abstract
Home fires do not only destroy property, but they also place human life at significant risk. Fires at night, during sleeping hours, can pose even more of a risk for a residential dweller due to the sheer fact that the resident is not in a fully awake and conscious state. In terms of the profoundly deaf community, these individuals may be more at risk, since hearing is not optimal, and traditional emergency devices may not prove worthy (Ashley, 2007). This chapter measures and quantifies two commercially available emergency alerting devices, available to the profoundly deaf community in three modalities: (1) sounds – a 520 HZ square wave and voice annunciation; (2) light – a 177 high intensity candela strobe; and (3) movement – an intermittent bed shaker. Providing a salient alert system increases the likelihood of an individual who is profoundly deaf to awaken regardless of the level of sleep, including REM sleep. What was measured were: (1) whether the subject awakens during REM sleep with each modality of the alerting devices aforementioned and (2) the quickness of the reaction time of the awakening process to determine the most successful of the three modalities tested.