Telephone for hard of hearing help please.

[EdwardCurrent]

Hello All.

My mother is hard of hearing and wears a hearing aid in her 'best' ear. When I telephone her, she takes her hearing aid out, as she says she cannot hear properly with the aid in, thus rendering the call difficult for us both.
I was wondering if somebody knew of any 'special' telephones (jokes aside ) that may make things easier for her please ?

Many thanks

Ed

 

[xerxes]

I've bought from the RNID website in the past for dealing with this kind of problem.

However, I've found that you can spend a lot of money on a phone which is supposed to help deaf people, and find that for some reason it isn't satisfactory. For this reason, it might be worth trying to find a shop which can demonstrate their products to your mother.

 

[breezer]

clicky

try this

 

[disinfo]

Check this out

http://www.maplin.co.uk/Module.aspx...uName=Buy this Hearing Aid Phone cheap online

Looks like it actually transmits to the hearing aid

 

[blondini]

Does her hearing aid have a switch with 'T' on it, and if so has she tried switching to T to use the phone?
Selecting 'T' disconnects the hearing aid microphone and a uses a coil to pick up the electromagnetic emissions from the telephone earpiece.

 

[TicklyT]

Many phones have inductive couplers fitted in the receiver, and most hearing aids have a 'T' setting on a switch that enables them to work with them.

Your mother would need to use her hearing aid switched to 'T' or 'Telephone' to make best use of the inductive coupler that directly transfers the electrical signals to the hearing aid.

Some telephones used to be fitted with an amplifying handset, but the amount of 'gain' was limited, otherwise it caused feedback, and would definitely blow the wax out of the ears of anyone with 'normal' hearing using the phone.

Similarly, inductive loops can be fitted to televisions etc, allowing a hearing aid user to hear the sound easily through their hearing aid.

 

[EdwardCurrent]

Thank you for your help and advice.

Ed

 

[securespark]

I am moderately deaf in both ears and have middle and HF loss to both. I also suffer tinnitus.

I am a great fan of loop systems. I went to my eldest son's school Christmas concert in the local church. They had a loop system which was fantastic. Switching both aids to the T setting meant whoever was talking into a mic felt like they were sitting right next to me talking loudly!

In fact, my aids picked up a bare whisper from one young girl to another standing near the mic.

She said to her friend, "I need a wee!!"

If you can get a phone with a coil built in, they are ideal, but you have to set the aid to the T setting, which can be fiddly, esp. if your Ma suffers arthritis.

The other option is a cordless phone with speakerphone capability. I have a Panasonic one which works well on the speakerphone setting.

I am a member of RNID and get copies of their mag "One In Seven".

They do regular product tests & have in the past done a test on HA compatible phones.

Unfortunately, I have binned all my old issues, but if you get in touch with RNID & ask them for a copy of their latest HA-compatible phone test report, I'm sure they will be able to help.

They may even be on-line.

Another good idea is to talk to them for help & advice about other products that make life easier for the HOH. There are advisors who make home visits, but I'm not sure who they are engaged by, whether charity or local authority or NHS.

Eddy, I take my HA out of my left ear when speaking on a mobile: believe it or not, I can hear better without it. It's by no means perfect, but much better than with it in place!

EDIT: see these: http://www.rnid.org.uk/shop/products/telephones/

 

[masona]

Hello All.

My mother is hard of hearing and wears a hearing aid in her 'best' ear. When I telephone her, she takes her hearing aid out, as she says she cannot hear properly with the aid in, thus rendering the call difficult for us both.

This is a very common problem with hearing aids, you can hear but don't know what they're saying sometime, I have a BT Relate 3000 model and if I get into difficulty, I just use the handfree which is a lot clearer plus have a volume setting as well so the hearing aids are nowhere near the hand set so you can have a normal conversation away from the phone. When my son's talk to me on the phone I cannot pick up what been said but can with the handfree, I don't have any problem when my wife speaking on my handset! I'm finding it's the male with a sharp voice that I cannot pick up. The other problem is the location of the mircophone on the hearing aid, tell your mother to pick up the handset until she can hear the dailing tone when it get louder and just practise, it maybe just nowhere near the mircophone so she cannot hear. It's just a habit of putting the phone over the years to the centre of your ear when you could hear but with hearing aids, the ear which is now the mircophone is located at the top of the ear