Background noise
People with hearing impairment - especially those who use hearing aids or cochlear implants - know that background noise can seriously hinder speech understanding. To provide a realistic background during auditory and visual speech presentation, different background noises can be selected by the user. Available noises include party, factory, or traffic noise, as well as calypso and jazz music. The level of the background noise can be set to realistic levels, or set low and gradually increased to test a user's skills.

Practice and test modes
Every lesson can be used in either practice or test mode. In practice mode, the user selects the word or phrase to be presented. The user can practice any of the utterances as many times as desired. When the user is ready, the system can easily be put into test mode to evaluate proficiency. In test mode, the program presents a speech utterance and the user responds by clicking on the associated button. The user's accuracy in identifying the examples is recorded and saved in the computer. Both practice and test modes can be used with any presentation mode and any noise background.