RIVERSIDE, Calif. — Gerson Lemus has been cutting hair for about 10 years.

“I say it found me more than I found it,” said Lemus.

People come to his shop, J’Bez barbershop in Riverside, Cailfornia, to get a fresh haircut and feel good about their appearance.

But when you sit down on the couch, you might feel something else.

It’s not an ordinary couch. It’s a speaker.

“I felt the music, so it was cool, it was cool,” said customer Jeremiah Mittchell, who was sitting on the couch.

“I like the fact that you can feel the noise while you’re there, and people can feel what 5d audio. I try to explain it, but it’s hard to get it through words, so you sit down on the couch, and you can experience it,” said Lemus.

It is hard to explain. So I just put the camera down on the couch, and you can see how much it vibrates as the music plays.

It’s a unique experience, all made possible by this guy, Ethan Castro, and his team at Edge Sound Research.

“Sound is vibration, so if you can control vibrations, you can control sounds and most of reality, right? So that’s essentially what we do, are we take advantage of vibration to make things seem really, really real,” said Castro.

He says those vibrations can help those who are deaf or have hearing issues experience the world more like those that can hear. He knows all about it.

“I was born premature, and that led to me having issues that caused me to be hard of hearing,” said Castro, “As I got older, it became more apparent that I was really missing half of all words that were being said or I couldn’t understand what people were saying as much as I knew someone was talking, but I didn’t know what they were saying.”

That’s what drives him to create products that can help the estimated 10 million people in the U.S. that are hard of hearing and the one million functionally deaf Americans according to the Survey of Income and Program Participation.

Castro hopes this technology can help people with hearing issues feel like they belong.

“When we invented it all together at UC Riverside, and I finally turned it on for the first time, I started feeling the music through my body like directly. I remember I was a little overwhelmed by trying to contend with my emotions of just like, hey, I don’t have to struggle anymore. I don’t have to worry anymore of trying so hard to try to fit in,” he said.

Tax season is a little more difficult for those who are deaf. Working with accountants who are also deaf can make things easier.

“English is my first language, so that’s why I was a little bit, like of a struggle,” said Charity Baca who is deaf.

Everything is a little different for Charity. Most people don’t realize it, but English is a second language to much of the deaf community.

That can make working with people who can hear difficult. With something as important as your taxes, it gets really tough.

“I did my taxes through a hearing provider. It was more complicated. It was more like, the questions were confusing because I wasn’t sure,” said Baca.

Luckily, she found a company that can do her taxes and speak her language.

“Doing taxes and accounting, there’s not really a big difference there, it’s just for me a way to work with the deaf community and I thought I’m going to grab this,” said Jason Gunderson, a deaf tax preparer for Deaf Tax.

Deaf Tax is deaf-owned and -operated tax and accounting firm. And it's the only deaf-owned tax firm in the country.

“I’m able to see how deaf customers, how they appreciate the information that they maybe did not have access to before, that they didn’t understand, that they weren’t willing to ask their preparers,” said Gunderson.

The services provided by Deaf Tax are very popular in the deaf community, more popular than founder Joshua Beal anticipated

“About 2015, we started putting videos up on Facebook. And at the time, it was me and my partner Charles, just two of us. We were overwhelmed we were working nonstop,” said Beal.

Beal founded Deaf Tax in 2007. Since then, its core principals have remained the same, providing a needed service to the community.

“Anytime you can communicate in your natural language, it’s always a big benefit. Another thing is a lot of clients now have access to information that they didn’t know about before. I have a great deal of pride, a great deal of respect for my community. I feel like I am doing something very important,” said Beal.

And it really is a needed service.

“This book shows that there are 12 deaf CPAs in the whole United States, only 12. Now, almost all of these CPAs, they work for a corporation or school. They’re not available to the deaf community,”

And for everyone from Josh to Charity it’s about increased access to everyday services.

“I’m trying get past just the tax, but financial information, how to save money, how to cut down your interest rate. So I feel like this is the platform to empower the deaf community financially,” said Beal.

“They are tattoo shops or art companies there are many that are just starting right now and they’re starting to grow as deaf businesses or deaf owners starting to set up their establishments and I’m really glad because we need to grow and it’s been a struggle,” said Baca.