<p>My mother has tried a variety of hearing aids with limited success…with nerve damage there is only so much that can be done. She has great difficulty hearing over the phone and can’t hear female voices at all. At present she is using a phone that announces the number of the incoming caller in a loud, digital voice but it is not enough. I think that a telephone with a readable ticker of some kind would be worth a try. Does anyone in CC-land have experience with a phone like this? Do they work and is there a particular brand that you have been happy with?</p>
<p>Mom’s birthday is coming up and giving her a phone like this (even if I have to pay a monthly fee for some sort of “ticker” service) would not just be a gift to her, it would be an even bigger gift to me.</p>
<p>My father was hard of hearing and had trouble using his landline phone even with an amplification device. He bought a cell phone. It worked great.</p>
<p>Perhaps your mother might like to try out some cell phones and see whether she can hear adequately with them. If it works, it would be a cheap solution.</p>
<p>Thank you for the thought. Unfortunately Mom has arthritic hands and while she has a cell for emergencies, she has difficulty holding it. Interesting that the cell worked for your Dad. Why exactly was it better? You are making me wonder if I should have her try a cell with a headset.</p>
<p>You might consider a combination phone and TTY. Try Ultratec, which is a leading TTY manufacturer ([Ultratec</a> - The Worldwide Leader in Text Telecommunications](<a href=“http://www.ultratec.com%5DUltratec”>http://www.ultratec.com)). There are probably others manufacturers. Some TTYs can recognized Caller IDs and display that information. The TTYs with Voice Carry Over (VCO) are very useful. The person who is hard of hearing calls a relay operator and speaks directly to them requesting that the operator call a number. The relay operator will call that number and relay all communication by typing and the text will appear on the dispaly of the TTY. It can make a big difference for those who are deaf or hard of hearing.</p>
<p>I have no idea. Neither did he. He got the cell phone because he was looking after a disabled relative and needed to be reachable if her daytime caregiver needed him. He was pleasantly surprised to discover that he could hear calls much better on the cell than on his home phone.</p>
<p>There are captioning phones as well. Depending on the state of your residence, many phone and cable bills tack on an extra fee for the deaf and hard of hearing (HOH). In California, there are services that are subsidized by those fees that provide the appropriate phone device for the HOH. Your mother may find a captioning telephone helpful. TDD devices are a bit slow. And, if she is arthritic, the use of a computer in tandem with an operator relay could be painful for her hands. The captioning phone would allow her to speak, but the operator relays back a written response.</p>
<p>According to the user reviews the speakers on it are built for the hearing impaired and the buttons are large and easy to dial. It’s a phone for seniors.</p>
<p>Also check out presto.com for a device that will enable your mother to receive e-mail. It will print out the messages for her a few times a day and she doesn’t have to do ANYTHING at all. No computer needed either. My 92-year-old mom loves it. When she really can’t hear on the phone (distressingly frequently, even with all her assistive gadgets), she says “Send me an e-mail”, which is a phrase I never thought I’d hear issuing from her mouth.</p>
<p>My folks use most phones (land line & cell) on speaker phone. That works for them, so they can actually hear & participate in the discussion. They have more trouble hearing & understanding on a regular handset. If you’re thinking cell phone, have your mom come with you & try out various cell phones & see if there is one where the speaker button is convenient and easy for her to press. Some have too many small buttons and are confusing for many SRs & others, plus her arthritis may make it tougher for her to press small buttons.</p>
<p>One of my cell phones has the speaker button on the side of the phone while another has a button that has a speaker on it on the face of the phone that is the speaker button. I had another phone where the speaker button is tougher to figure out and not a separate button.</p>
<p>Have her check with her state disability office. Often there are programs for assistance for phones for the hearing impaired. Usually there are income guidelines but the income levels are quite high. I would suggest a phone that displays the text while talking. CapTel makes one–not sure if posting links is ok but their website is their name=it’s short for captioning telephone and works pretty much like closed captioning on a tv.</p>
<p>We have tried the speakerphone method and it is better than holding a phone to her ear but I can see that it is going to be a lot of trial and error to find a way to be able to have a real conversation with her. SteveMA - I am going to stop at her local state dept. of aging office when I drive down to see her next week. Great suggestions, thank you everyone.</p>
<p>Speakerphones are worse for me personally. What does work best for me is using a speakerphone while holding the phone up to my ear but even then, it’s not great. If someone on the other end is talking on a speakerphone, forget it, can’t understand anything.</p>
<p>The problem with hearing aids is if you have an older model, the microphone gets covered by the telephone and you end up with serious feedback (like if you put a regular microphone near something metal and it squeals). Newer styles that fit behind the ear have the microphone behind the ear so you need to position the phone in such a way that the receiver is near that microphone. It just doesn’t work well no matter what you do.</p>
<p>Email and texting on cell phones are WONDERFUL.</p>
<p>SteveMa, are you hearing impaired? I’m asking because I feel the same way about speakerphones but my mother, who is hearing impaired, finds it’s the only way she can use a phone. Texting is out of the question for many seniors, unless it’s a smart phone, and even then that can be difficult due to arthritis and small buttons and vision problems. Unfortunately, my parents have all of those problems combined.</p>
<p>Yes I am. I don’t have vision problems or arthritis yet, but I’m not a teenager either so texting is still a work in process. I have a Droid X and held horizontally it has huge buttons. I find the smartphones to be easier to use in general too, but no, it’s not an option for everyone.</p>
<p>People think that hearing aids are like glasses, they correct your hearing loss to the same degree that glasses correct your vision and that is just not the case. Hearing aids just make everything louder, but that is everything. Your brain naturally filters out some background noises, hearing aids don’t. Some of the more advanced ones do to a point but that comes at a reduction of voice quality as well. If someone is sitting in a room with the TV on and trying to have a conversation with someone, the hearing aid picks up the sound from the TV and the sound of the speaker. Without hearing aids, your brain can “shut off” the tv more effectively so the person you are talking to is easy to understand, it just doesn’t work that way with hearing aids and that is why group situations, telephone conversations, etc. are so difficult. On the phone, you get the background noise of the phone line interfering with the conversation. If someone speaks too fast, everything gets jumbled because it takes a fraction of a second longer for your brain to process what you heard, etc. I often “hear” what someone said after they said it, not while they are saying it. It is very frustrating, especially when people just assume that since you wear hearing aids your hearing is “normal”.</p>
<p>Compare it to listening to music. If you turn the radio up so it is pretty loud, everything gets distorted. Same thing happens with hearing aids. You can only have them up so loud as well.</p>
<p>Thanks for the clear explanation Steve. I knew that large group conversations were hard for the hearing impaired but I never understood why. I also think that some phones may be better on the speaker setting then others. Some give a more echo-ey sound then others.</p>
<p>On a related note, I just found out that my Nook color has subtitles for Netflix movies!! I don’t know of all of Netflix is this way yet but it sure is a bonus for my mundane time on my elliptical!</p>