Nowadays, the mobile phone network is a lot more reliable (and there’s a lot less static involved). But in some cases, it will still be hard to hear what the person on the other end is saying. And for people who have hearing loss, it can be particularly difficult.
There must be a simple solution for that, right? Why not use a pair of hearing aids to make your phone conversations a little easier? Well, that’s not… exactly… the way it works. In reality, while hearing aids can make face-to-face conversations a lot easier to manage, there are some challenges associated with phone-based conversations. But there are a few tips for phone calls with hearing aids that can help you get a bit more from your next conversation.
Why phone calls and hearing aids don’t always play nice
Hearing loss typically isn’t sudden. It isn’t like somebody just turns down the general volume on your ears. You tend to lose bits and pieces at a time. This can make it difficult to even detect when you have hearing loss, especially because your brain tries really hard to fill in the gaps with context clues and other visual information.
When you talk on the phone, you no longer have these visual hints. Your Brain doesn’t have the information it requires to fill in the blanks. You only hear parts and pieces of the other person’s voice which sounds muffled and distorted.
How hearing aids can be helpful
This can be helped by wearing hearing aids. They’ll particularly help your ears fill in a lot of those missing pieces. But there are a few distinctive accessibility and communication challenges that occur from wearing hearing aids while talking on the phone.
Feedback can happen when your hearing aids come near a phone, for instance. This can make things hard to hear and uncomfortable.
Tips to improve the phone call experience
So what steps can be taken to help make your hearing aids work better with a phone? Well, there are a number of tips that most hearing specialists will suggest:
- Be truthful with the individual you’re speaking with on the phone: It’s all right to admit if you’re having difficulties! You may simply need to be a little extra patient, or you might want to consider using text, email, or video chat.
- Use video apps: Face-timing someone or hopping onto a video chat can be a great way to help you hear better. The sound won’t be louder or clearer, but at least you’ll have that visual information back. And once more, this type of contextual information will be considerably helpful.
- Find a quiet spot to carry out your phone calls. The less noise around you, the easier it will be to pick out the voice of the individual you’re on the phone with. If you limit background noise during phone calls your hearing aids will work so much better.
- Put your phone in speaker mode as frequently as you can: Most feedback can be averted this way. Your phone calls might not be very private, but even though there still may be a little distortion, you should be able to better make out the voice on the other end. Knowing how to hold the phone better with hearing aids (that is, away from your ears) is critical, and speakerphone is how you achieve this!
- Stream your phone to your hearing aid using Bluetooth. Yes, modern hearing aids can stream to your smartphone via Bluetooth! This means that if your hearing aids are Bluetooth capable, phone calls can be streamed right to your phone. If you’re having difficulty using your phone with your hearing aid, a good place to begin getting rid of feedback would be switching to Bluetooth.
- Hearing aids aren’t the only assistive hearing device you can get: Devices, including numerous text-to-type services, are available to help you hear better during phone conversations.
Finding the best set of solutions will depend on what you use the phone for, how often you’re on the phone, and what your overall communication requirements are like. Your ability to once more enjoy phone conversations will be made possible with the right approach.
If you need more advice on how to utilize hearing aids with your phone, call us, we can help.