Access Through Action

23/11/2025

Everyone plays a role. Stop Bullying?

21/11/2025

🌼 Yoto Player vs Yoto Mini — What’s Best for HoH Kids
🌼(With Bluetooth considerations for hearing aids & CIs)

Parents often ask me whether the Yoto Player or the Yoto Mini offers better access for children who use hearing aids or cochlear implants.
Here’s the breakdown through a Hearing-Access Lens, not just a tech one.

🔊 Sound Quality Matters for Our Kids

Yoto Player (full size)
✔️ Stereo speakers – fuller, clearer sound for speech
✔️ Better volume and presence
✔️ Great for bedtime stories and room audio
✔️ Works as a Bluetooth speaker
❗ Bigger and less portable

Yoto Mini
✔️ Very portable
✔️ Great for the car, outings, and little hands
❗ Mono sound – simpler but not as rich
❗ Lower maximum volume
❗ Can be harder for kids who rely on stronger clarity

For many HoH kids, speech clarity matters more than extra features, and the full-size Player generally wins here.

👂 Mono vs Stereo for Hearing Aids & CIs

• Mono gives the same signal to both ears, reducing listening effort.
• Stereo can be great for music but sometimes splits sound in ways that make speech harder to process for hearing-impaired brains.

For audiobooks and stories, predictable, centre-focused sound tends to work best — and the Yoto Player’s speaker design supports this better.

📡What About Bluetooth?

Bluetooth changes the listening experience, so here’s what parents should know:

**Using Yoto as a Bluetooth speaker:**
• Audio sent from your phone can be slightly compressed
• Some users report lower maximum volume
• Occasional connection drops
• Fine for music, but not always ideal for speech access

**Bluetooth headphones:**
• Most hearing aids and CIs will NOT pair directly with the Yoto
• Kids often need their manufacturer’s streaming accessory
• Wired headphones usually give clearer, more reliable sound

**Overall Bluetooth takeaway:**
✔️ Convenient
✔️ Good for music and casual listening
❗ Not the best-quality option for speech clarity in HoH/CI kids
❗ Wired or direct listening is usually better

💛 **Which Should You Choose?**

**Choose the Yoto Player if your child:**
• Uses bilateral HAs or CIs
• Needs stronger, fuller sound
• Listens to stories daily
• Finds thin or quiet speakers hard to understand

**Choose the Yoto Mini if your child:**
• Needs something portable
• Mainly listens to music or short stories
• Gets overwhelmed by louder sound

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🌟 **My Final Verdict**
For most HoH children—especially those using story listening for language development—the full-size Yoto Player provides clearer, more accessible sound with less listening fatigue.
The Mini is a great second device for travel, but not the strongest primary option for speech access.

🌟 **My lived experience and Final Tip:
Be mindful of your child(ren) learning incorrect pronunciation and or vocabulary, once the brain wires language it takes more work to unwire, reteach and rewire.
If using Yoto with your child, use as a Bluetooth speaker, its the safest option. (bringing sound physically closer). If you plan to directly connect, test it real world through your child's devices and often.

Need Help?

Contact us for Assistive Technology and Access Advice.

20/11/2025

🔊 Access vs Support

Why the Difference Matters

When we talk about children with hearing loss, people often focus on support, extra help, check-ins, or someone sitting beside the child.
But access is something completely different… and absolutely essential.

✨ Access means a child can take in information just like their hearing peers can.
It’s not about effort or “trying harder.”
It’s about having the right technology, environment, and communication tools in place so the child can see, hear, and understand what’s happening around them.

✨ Support is what we add on to help a child build skills, confidence, and independence—like therapy, mentoring, visual schedules, or organisational tools.

Both are important… but access must come first.
Because without access, all the support in the world can’t fix a barrier.

Examples:
🌼 Access is using hearing aids, CIs, Roger mics, captions, and visual communication.
🌼 Support is learning to organise schoolwork, developing language skills, or having a teacher’s aide help with tasks.
🌼 Access is reducing background noise, seating a child where they can see faces clearly, or using an Auslan interpreter.
🌼 Support is helping them practice social skills or navigate expectations.

When we get access right, children can fully participate, feel included, and engage with learning, not just cope.

At Access Through Action, we help families, schools and community understand these differences so children can thrive with the communication tools that fit their needs.
Because every child deserves equitable access… not extra effort.

💙 Our passion is empowering yours.

12/11/2025

Is your school supporting deaf or hard of hearing students who use Auslan?
We’ve got something designed just for them.

Our Cyber Safety Workshop, supported by the Australian Government’s campaign - Act Now. Stay Secure, is delivered completely in Auslan to helping deaf and hard of hearing students, understand online safety.

💬 Interactive. Accessible. Empowering.
📍Now open for schools in Queensland, South Australia, Tasmania, and Victoria.
🔗Secure your workshop spot today: https://www.deafchildrenaustralia.org.au/cyber-safety-awareness-program/
👉 Expressions of Interest close 30th November 2025.

08/11/2025

Celebrate World Children’s Day

07/11/2025

07/11/2025

Tips to Support Sensory Regulation for Children With Hearing Loss

Many children with hearing loss move between being sensory seekers and sensory avoiders — and that’s completely valid. Their sensory systems often work harder to make sense of the world, and this can show up in behaviour, attention, eating, learning, and emotional regulation.

Here are some helpful insights and practical strategies for families, educators, and therapists:

✅ 1. Understand that hearing loss is a whole-body experience

Reduced access to sound — even with hearing aids or cochlear implants — can shift how a child processes other senses. When auditory input is low or inconsistent, children may naturally seek more movement (vestibular) or push for extra tactile feedback to feel grounded.

✅ 2. Late language can impact feeding and swallowing

When language develops later, children often have delayed awareness of their mouth, tongue, and swallowing patterns. This can show up as:

picky eating

preference for soft foods

difficulty chewing or coordinating bites

stuffing food

gagging on textures

Support strategies include modelling language around eating, slowing mealtimes, and using visuals so the child understands sequence and expectations.
✅ 3. Many HoH/CI kids crave vestibular input

Because the cochlea also plays a role in balance, children with hearing loss may seek:

spinning

climbing

swinging

big movement play

rough-and-tumble activities.

✅ 4. These activities help regulate their nervous system and support attention and emotional control.These activities help regulate their nervous system and support attention and emotional control.These help children shift between seeking and avoiding in a safe and controlled way

✅ 5. Reduce overwhelm through access-first communication

Children who miss auditory information can become dysregulated quickly. Support with:

visual schedules

gesture and sign (e.g., Auslan)

clear routines

repetition and rephrasing

reducing competing noise

sitting the child where visual cues are strongest

Regulation improves when the child doesn’t need to work as hard to interpret the world.

✅ 6. Remember: behaviour is communication.

What looks like “overactive,” “withdrawn,” or “picky” is often a sensory need or a communication gap. Understanding the why behind the behaviour leads to much better outcomes than trying to “correct” the behaviour itself.

07/11/2025

2026 School Wellbeing Program

06/11/2025

Soon, the Federal Government will release its report into the NDIS support lists changes.

For several months, we've amplified the voices of community members, carers, advocates and service providers.

With your help, we've advocated strongly for mainstream smart devices - smart phones, smart watches and tablets - to be reinstated as approved supports for our community.

We've told the Government that the replacement supports process isn't fair.

And that people who are D/deaf or have hearing loss need to have a range of communication options because they have no certainty around communication accessibility anywhere they go.

We've given our all on this - sharing YOUR stories, YOUR views, YOUR examples, and we're crossing our fingers for a positive outcome.

30/10/2025

Today I learnt and was informed that the Goodsam App has successlly been involved statewide in 87 resuscitations of people in cardiac arrest.

Of those 87 resuscitations, 31 persons were shocked using an available AED.

Those are amazing statistics, thats 87 humans who got to go home their families and friends. It also proves that early CPR does save lives.

Statistically only 1 in 10 people survive an out-of-hospital cardiac arrest? Together, we can help change that. By performing CPR and using an Automated External Defibrillator (AED) if available, you can make a life-saving difference while waiting for paramedics to arrive.

This is also the perfect time to sign up for the GoodSAM app - that alerts registered
volunteers when someone nearby needs CPR. GoodSAM is integrated with the Triple
Zero (000) dispatch system, so you’ll be guided by an emergency medical call taker from NSW Ambulance until paramedics arrive.

Learn more and get involved at:

For every minute a person in cardiac arrest and doesn’t receive chest compressions (CPR), their chances of survival fall by 7 to 10%.

26/10/2025

To build a sustainable future, our Community Partnerships Program was created to benefit areas where our assets are located or under development. Find out more.