Re:Hearing for the deaf? (Score 2, Informative)

Depends on the reason they are deaf. There are two kinds of hearing loss, conductive and sensory/neural. Conductive hearing loss is caused by destruction/loss of function of the mechanical portion of the ear - the ear drum (tympanic membrane) and the hearing 'bones' (stapes, incus, malleus). Sensory/neural hearing loss comes from the destruction of the nerve receptors in the cochlea or the auditory nerve itself. This system would help someone hear if they had conductive hearing loss, because it would bypass the middle ear sound conduction system and directly stimulate the sensory hearing receptors in the cochlea by bone conduction. It would be far less useful to people with sensory/neural hearing loss.