Many of our favourite places to hang out are noisy like cafes, bars, and restaurants. For hearing aid wearers, the background noise in places like this can make conversation even more difficult to keep up with.
Thankfully, there’s a lot of hearing aid technology available to help enhance your ability to keep up with conversation and navigating public interactions. Better still, many public venues are making the effort to support hearing aid users with telecoil and Auracast installations.
Remote microphones
One of our readers spotted a lanyard microphone device that pairs to another person’s hearing aid to assist with listening, and wanted to learn more about the technology.
Some lanyard microphones are built on the same telecoil loop technology used in many public spaces around Australia. One person wears a small transmitter microphone that picks up speech and filters out background noise, sending it wirelessly to a receiver worn by the hearing aid user. The receiver then feeds the audio into the hearing aid through the magnetic telecoil system.
Phonak is one brand that uses the microphone and lanyard system, making it compatible with any telecoil-enabled hearing aid.
Oticon and ReSound offer brand-specific remote microphones that stream to compatible hearing aids. Cochlear makes wireless microphones that connect to its own sound processors.
Telecoil installations are commonplace around Australia. Public transport platforms and vehicles, performance venues, airports, and public buildings and service areas are just a few places you may find the systems.
Smartphone hearing assistance
Made for iPhone (MFi) is Apple’s certification for hearing aids that can pair directly to iOS devices using Bluetooth Low Energy. The system enables direct audio streaming for calls, music, podcasts, and navigation.
MFi also provides on-device control for setting volume and viewing battery level rather than carrying another remote.
Another major feature is called Live Listen, which turns the iPhone’s microphone into a remote mic, picking up sounds and transmitting to the hearing aid, all without the need for a separate remote microphone.
Smartphones can also help capture speech and audio so that you don’t miss anything. Live Transcribe on Android and Live Captions on newer iPhones can do this, as well as a host of third-party apps.
On Android open Settings, navigate to Accessibility, tap Live Transcribe, then tap Open Live Transcribe. If you don’t see it, you may wish to install Google’s official app for it from the Play Store here.
On iOS, open Settings, navigate to Accessibility, scroll down to tap Live Captions, and toggle the feature on. Captions float on top of other apps, or you can make them fullscreen.
Auracast
Many modern hearing aids support Bluetooth, and the newest innovation is the Auracast protocol, which allows multiple devices to pair up together to transmit or receive audio.
Auracast is designed for one-to-many listening, so that one transmitter can broadcast to multiple devices at once. The advantage is that a whole group of hearing aid users could pair up together to hear the same audio, making it useful for guided tours, meetings, classes, or groups where several people want to hear one person more clearly.
Some locations like airports, museums, cinemas, and lecture halls are exploring the technology, which is still fairly new. Some venues like the Sydney Opera House have already implemented transmitters in their property.
Hearing aid technology is always improving
Features like telecoil are becoming less common, especially in smaller in-ear hearing aids, but phone streaming, Bluetooth, and Auracast are becoming much more common. With Auracast transmitters becoming more common around Australia, it’s one of the key features to look for in a new set of hearing aids.
As for hearing aid technology to help you in everyday situations, there are many options. Which features do you rely on most often? Let us know in the comments. To keep up with our articles, consider subscribing.
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