Is your loss of hearing causing you to chat less often on the phone? Hearing loss, over time, can cause you to feel isolated. Don’t break up with your phone. There are ways to deal with it so you can stay in touch with your loved ones.
It’s All About Communication
They say communication is the indispensable thing with any relationship, and that is absolutely true with your phone. What can be done to make things better is the important question.
- Are the voices tough to hear? It’s possible the volume needs to be turned up.
- A hearing exam is a smart idea. Not all hearing loss is permanent, so get a correct diagnosis. Temporary hearing loss is often caused by something as simple as an ear infection or to much ear wax.
- Bluetooth or headphones could be possibilities if you’ve already turned the volume up. It’s a relatively affordable way to enhance the sound quality on the phone, and that might be all you need.
If you’ve already looked at at the obvious issues and have ruled them out, it will be time to consider more in depth solutions.
There’s an App For That
There are really several potential apps. There are many apps you can download that work to get you, and your phone back on the same page, some of them are pretty cool.
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:
- Hamilton Mobile Cap Tel
- Live Caption
- Note, Listen for Deaf
Not all voice to text apps are free, but the majority are affordably priced.
You Can Get a Phone For That
If you want to find a landline solution, you can find phones for your home that function the same way as an app. They make it much easier to hear by amplifying the sound on the other end. They also work to equalize the tone, so high pitched sounds that frequently get lost become clearer.
You also have the alternative of getting a captioning phone. The captioning service requires a special phone that has an LCD screen. 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 directly into the system. The words are then displayed on the captioning phone’s screen. You will require the internet to use a captioning service.
An old school phone system that you can still find which works in a similar way to a captioning service is Text-to-Voice Teletype (TTY). A separate device to show the text is necessary, however.
Hearing Aids Are The Best Option
The times when you would hear ear piercing feedback anytime your hearing aids came near a phone are over. The current technology can work with a hearing aid compatible phone to improve the sound quality and remove interference such as background noise. What’s more, they are wireless and will work even when you aren’t on the phone.
Compatibility with both landlines and smart-phones is possible with modern, quality hearing aids. You hold the phone up to the hearing aid and allow the technology to work its magic by streaming the sound from one device to the other.
Lots of digital hearing aids are also Bluetooth compatible. Pairing your hearing aid up with your smart-phone is done exactly the same way as pairing your phone with any other Bluetooth device. When the phone rings, the sound goes directly to your hearing aids.
Don’t let hearing loss to wreck your friendships and other relationships. Get back on 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.