Is your loss of hearing causing you to talk less frequently on the phone? You can feel isolated as time passes due to your hearing loss. It isn’t necessary to quit talking on the phone. You can absolutely discover methods to keep in touch with your friends and loved ones.
It’s All About Communication
With any relationship, communication is the key and the same goes for your phone. Can anything be done to enhance the situation?
- Are the voices hard to hear? Look to make sure the volume is all the way up on the phone.
- An ear exam is a smart idea. Not all loss of hearing is permanent, so get a proper diagnosis. Basic things such as earwax buildup or an ear infection will cause temporary hearing loss.
- You can try accessories such as Bluetooth or headphones if the volume is already turned up. Perhaps that’s all you need to make your phone sound better and it doesn’t cost very much.
After you rule out some of the more obvious problems, you can have a look at other possible solutions that will get you back on the phone.
You Can Get an App For That
There are really quite a few potential apps. There are some pretty cool apps that will get you comfortable being back on your phone.
What the other person says can be turned to text with some of these apps. These apps are far from perfect, but you should be able to work with them. Brands to look up include:
- Live Caption
- Hamilton Mobile Cap Tel
- Note, Listen for Deaf
Most voice to text apps are reasonably priced even though not all of them are free.
Phones For The Hard of Hearing
You can also find a landline phone that does the same thing as an app. By amplifying the voice an the other end, they make it less difficult to hear. High pitched sounds on the other end become clearer because they can equalize the sound.
A captioning phone is another alternative. You need to have a special phone that has a screen if you want to take advantage of the captioning service. Captioning works with a third party operator that either repeats the spoken words so speech recognition software can translate them into text or types them right into the system. From there the words are displayed on the captioning phone’s screen. Most captioning devices need to have internet service, as well.
Text-to-Voice Teletype (TTY) is a traditional phone system that is still around and works in a similar way to the captioning phone. A separate device to show the text is required, however.
Getting Hearing Aids is Your Best Bet
The days when you would hear ear piercing feedback whenever your hearing aids came near a phone are over. There are hearing aid compatible phones which eliminate background noise and other kinds of interference to improve sound quality. Modern hearing aid technology is compatible with these phones. What’s more, they are wireless and will work even when you’re not on the phone.
A sophisticated program that allows it to be compatible with both smart-phones and landlines is a stand out feature of modern hearing aids. The technology works by holding the hearing device up to the phone and streaming the sound from the one to the other.
Bluetooth compatibility is also a normal feature of today’s hearing aid tech. Pairing your hearing aid up with your smart-phone is exactly the same as pairing your phone with any other Bluetooth device. The sound goes directly to your hearing aids when it rings.
There isn’t any reason to allow hearing loss wreck a perfectly good relationship. Make up with your phone whatever it takes so you can start talking again. You can check out the newest hearing aid technology by making an appointment with a hearing care specialist.