Other Devices That Help

Assistive Listening Devices

Life, like a symphony, is filled with a complexity of sounds and voices. Hearing Support Systems and Accessories are various assistive listening devices (ALDs) that work with or without hearing aids to help you experience all of the rich sounds around you. Designed to enhance hearing communication and sometimes to screen out background noises, ALDs can even mean the difference between life and death. These include amplified telephones, alarm/alert devices, infrared listening systems, and personal communication devices.

Amplified telephones are ALDs that can help you meet the special challenge of phone conversation. Sometimes the lack of visual cues can make understanding on the phone especially hard. Amplified telephones have the ability to increase sounds beyond normal phone volumes and heighten high frequencies, or pitches, that are important to understanding phone conversation. They help a listener compensate for the lack of visual clues and eliminate annoying hearing aid feedback that is common with regular phones.

Alarm/alert devices offer important, even life-saving, support, especially during the middle of the night or any time when you aren't wearing your hearing aids. These ALDs are alarm clocks and fire alarms that emit a very loud signal or alert you through other sensory cues such as flashing lights or bed shaking. Special phone ringers, doorbells and baby cry monitors also work in this manner.

Infrared listening systems can help you hear the television or radio without disturbing others. Sound systems in many public facilities are compatible with these ALDs, which means you can enjoy theater, movies, religious services and other events once more.

Imagine being able to hear in a college seminar, at a club meeting or in a business meeting? Personal communicators, which are simply personal amplifiers, offer help in more intimate situations where a sound system or speaker system can't be accessed. You can set a microphone near the speaker and hear him/her through your own headset or neckloop at a volume comfortable for you without disturbing others. These devices can be useful with or without hearing aids.

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