Equipment for deaf, deafened
& Hard of Hearing People
There is a large range of equipment to aid deaf, deafened and hard of hearing people in daily life. These products are often referred to as assistive (listening) devices or environmental aids to distinguish them from hearing aids ("Deaf Aids").
Doorbells, alarm clocks, pagers and other alerting warning devices. Often these use flashing lights or vibrators.
Doorbells.
Simply knowing that someone is at the door can be a major problem. Solutions can be as simple as an extra loud bell, or flashing light systems, body worn vibrating pagers or systems which flash all the house lights
Baby monitors and alarms.
Knowing your baby is crying or your elderly relative needs assistance can be another problem. Solutions exist with simple sound monitors, domestic pagers and visual baby monitors.
TV & Radio listening
Social, family and neighbour problems can be caused by having the TV or radio turned up to assist listening often without realising the annoyance caused.
Inductive hearing aid loops for hearing aid users. Simple wired TV amplifiers or even headphones and cordless sound systems using radio or infra-red transmission can provide a solution.
Telephone listening
Loud telephones with built in amplification. Clip on telephone amplifiers for those on the move. Small inductive loops for mobiles and handphones. Nowadays mobile phones have the ability to be used with external equipment, hands free operation has made it easy to design and provide add ons for use by hearing aid users.
Text telephones like the Minicom™.
The adoption of internet chat and sms texting has probably reduced the social need for text phones, but they are still useful contacting business and statutory organisations.
Flashing telephone "Bells".
Having an adapted or text phone is great you still need to know when it is ringing. Again flashing lights, loud bells and pagers can help
Caption readers that display "Closed Captions" (subtitles) found on many pre-recorded videos.
These have been replaced by the captions/subtitles included on DVDs, technological advances helping?
© 2004