Two master's degrees completed!
Two master's degrees completed!
Two of Eikholt's employees have now completed their master's degree! In May 2025, the audiographer at Eikholt Anne-May Førland his master's thesis "Mobility programme in hearing aids for people with combined visual and hearing impairment/deafblindness" at NTNU (Norwegian University of Science and Technology) in Trondheim. At the same time, senior counsellor and social worker Victoria Falen her master's thesis. Her thesis is entitled "User-controlled personal assistance (BPA) - A service for people with combined sensory loss/deafblindness"
Mobility programme
Anne May's master's thesis is about how the sound in hearing aids can be adjusted to work as well as possible for people with deafblindness who use their hearing to orientate themselves in their surroundings. In her work, she has created a recipe for a mobility programme for all types of hearing aids, developed a sound localisation test and tested the use of the mobility programme in practice, i.e. outdoors in traffic.
Test group and control group
To test the mobility programme, she enlisted the help of 23 people with deafblindness. In addition, she recruited 64 people for a control group in order to compare the results. The user organisations LSHDB (National Association for the Combined Visually and Hearing Impaired/Deafblind) and FNDB (Norwegian Deafblind Association) contributed to the recruitment.
Very useful
The conclusion of the study is that mobility programmes can be very useful for some people in selected situations. Mobility programmes are therefore worth a try for people with combined visual and hearing impairment who use hearing aids in both ears and orientate themselves in their surroundings using their hearing.
The recipe for the mobility programme
The recipe for the mobility programme tested in the master thesis is available for download here.
The knowledge is passed on
The knowledge gained from the master's project is continued in Eikholt's individual courses on hearing and orientation and mobility. Anne-May is one of the trainers on the group course "Orientation and mobility" spring 2026.
The master's thesis was presented at the Eikholt conference on orientation and mobility.
Want to know more?
If you are interested in knowing more about the master thesis, please contact Anne-May by e-mail anne.may.forland@eikholt.no
User-controlled Personal Assistance (BPA)
In May 2025, senior counsellor and social worker Victoria Falen also submitted her master's thesis. Her thesis is called "User-controlled personal assistance (BPA) - A service for people with combined sensory loss/deafblindness" and was submitted to USN (University of South-Eastern Norway).
Victoria's master's thesis is about how the BPA scheme works for people with combined sensory loss/deafblindness, with a particular focus on their experiences of the allocation process and the content of the service.
Background information
An important reason for conducting the study was feedback from users of Eikholt that in many cases the scheme was inadequate and that municipalities lacked knowledge about their specific needs.
Decisive role
The findings from the study show that BPA plays a crucial role in promoting independence and participation for people with combined sensory loss/deafblindness. However, many people also experience challenges in the application process, both in their meetings with the municipality, and that many experience having to appeal the original decision after mapping carried out by the municipalities.
Need for more expertise
The paper points out that there is a great need for increased expertise and national guidelines to ensure that this service is truly accessible to the needs of people with deafblindness. She also points to the need for more research knowledge on the topic.
Want to know more?
If you are interested in knowing more about the master thesis, please contact Victoria by email: victoria.falen@eikholt.no