New Standard Sets Sound Level Guidelines for Video Game Consoles
The World Health Organization and the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) have published a new standard intended to reduce the risk of hearing loss among video game players. The standard, which applies to both home use and esports contexts, provides guidelines for devices such as video game consoles, personal computers, headphones, and headsets.
The standard requires video game systems to determine a user’s exposure as a percentage of a reference dose of 80 dBA for forty hours per week. This exposure is intended for adults. The standard recommends that systems allow users to select a reference dose of 75 dBA for forty hours per week, intended for children.
Communication of the user’s dose is required on a rolling seven-day cycle. The interface must indicate whether an activity is “safe/OK” or “unsafe/not OK.” Users who have exceeded 100 percent of their weekly dose must receive a warning that further listening at the current volume poses a risk to hearing and be offered a choice to either accept this risk or protect their hearing. When a user responds to this prompt by choosing to protect their hearing, the system should provide options for the user to either lower the sound to a safer level, to be reminded again later, or to ignore the warning. For users who do not take any action, the standard requires the system to automatically reduce the volume to no more than 80 dBA for the adult mode and no more than 75 dBA for the children mode.
Othe requirements in the standard include a “headphone safety mode” that automatically adjusts the volume when a user changes between loudspeakers and headphones.
According to a WHO press release, approximately 3 billion people worldwide play video games on the kinds of devices covered by the standard. The standard notes that more than one billion people are at risk of hearing loss due to unsafe noise exposures from recreational activities.
ITU is the United Nations specialized agency for information and communication technologies. The new standard, ITU-T H.872, Safe Listening for Video Gameplay and Esports, is available as a PDF download from the ITU website. For more information, read the WHO press release.
