Assistive Listening Devices

If you’re a hearing aid wearer, then you know that hearing aids go a long way toward helping you elucidate speech and environmental sounds. However, even with advanced devices, there are some situations where you need a little extra help. For these times, many people find assistive listening devices very useful.

What are assistive listening devices (ALDs)?

There usually are three parts to an ALD: a microphone that picks up the sounds, a sound processor, and an amplifier that increases the volume and sends it to the recipient's ear. The speaker is needed because people who have hearing loss tend to need 15-25 decibels more than the average person to hear clearly.

If I already have a hearing aid, why do I need an assistive listening device?

Hearing aids are useful for speech improvement but less successful in distinguishing background noise from the spoken word. The ALDs can compensate for poor performance in several listening situations, such as:

Sounds from further afield. As we move further from sound sources, sound fades, making conversations more difficult to understand.
Echo and reverberated environments. Big, open spaces and rooms with minimal furnishings are not conducive to a pleasant listening environment. Sound waves tend to bounce off hard surfaces, causing reverberation and unclear speech sounds.
Background noise. Background noise creates disturbances, which makes it hard for you to concentrate on speech. Hearing aid users have no choice but to turn up the volume when they are having difficulties in those cases. That adds to the background noise sadly.

ALDs are designed to separate different sounds and only increase the volume of the desired sounds.

In what situations are assistive listening devices most useful?

In public places where sound sources are far from the listener, assistive listening devices are particularly useful. Here are some areas they work well:

churches
restaurants
banks
political rallies
schools and universities
work conferences
meeting rooms
while making phone calls

What kinds of assistive listening devices exist?

TV Listening Devices

These make it easier for those with hearing loss to watch TV. These systems allow the user to listen to television without disturbing others and are ideal for watching Tv when everyone else is in bed.

Hearing Loops

Those with compromised hearing can more clearly understand using hearing loops in schools, theatres, meeting rooms, and other areas.

These devices typically use flat copper tape, mounted on a venue board. It uses telecoils to relay the sound to hearing aids and cochlear implants directly via a magnetic field. In noisy areas, they reduce background noise and other repetitive noises by sending the sound signal directly to the user's ear.

If a venue has built a hearing loop, there will often be a recognizable logo that communicates this.

FM Systems

FM Systems are wireless hearing aids that support the use of hearing aids, cochlear implants. They also help people who are hard of hearing but do not wear hearing aids, particularly in expansive and noisy environments.

They allow sound to be heard closer to a speaker. The system is close to the sound source or directly connected to the sound source and transmits clear sound to the user, providing greater speech/sound clarity and reducing background noise.

Amplified Telephones

Captioned Telephones

One of the new trends in the captioned telephone. They are designed for people with hearing loss who find using the phone troublesome. These devices use state-of-the-art technology to capture what the individual is saying on the other end, and display an easy-to-read screen for the text.

Some even feature the use of a live captioning agent to help facilitate understanding further. The call is immediately linked to a captioning agent to help transcribe the request into a specific format. To translate the sound into captions, they use voice recognition and manual adjustments. The combination of technology and human interaction helps to provide detailed captions to understand the speech of the other person better.

For more information on ALDs and to look at the options that we offer, contact us today!

Are you ready to experience the benefits of treating hearing loss? Get in touch with us at Encore Hearing today!

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