Assistive listening devices, sometimes called assisted listening devices, help in specific situations: watching television, using the phone, one-on-one conversation, or being alerted to the doorbell. Some people use them instead of hearing aids, more use them alongside. What they do not do is replace hearing aids for general, all-day hearing loss, because they are not programmed to your hearing.
Hearing aids are the best-known way to manage hearing loss, but they are not the only technology available, and for some problems they are not the most effective one.
Here is what exists, what each option is genuinely good at, and where the honest limits are.
Personal amplifiers
Portable devices that make speech and nearby sound louder. They come as handheld units, or worn around the neck, or clipped to clothing, usually with headphones or earbuds.
They are useful for one-on-one conversation, watching television and small gatherings, and they are inexpensive compared with hearing aids.
The limitation is important: a personal amplifier is not programmed to your hearing loss, because nobody has measured it. It raises everything by roughly the same amount, including the background noise and the pitches you still hear perfectly well. Most hearing loss affects high pitches more than low ones, so amplifying everything equally tends to make sound louder without making speech clearer.
For occasional use in a quiet room, they can help. As an all-day solution, most people find them disappointing, and that experience often puts them off hearing technology altogether, which is a shame.
TV listening devices
If turning the television up is causing arguments in your house, there are better answers.
If you already wear hearing aids, most modern ones connect to a TV streaming device that sends the television audio directly to your hearing aids. Dialogue becomes far easier to follow, and everyone else in the room keeps the volume where they want it. This is one of the most reliably appreciated accessories we fit.
If you do not wear hearing aids, there are standalone TV listening systems and amplified headphones that do a similar job, with a transmitter connected to the television and a wireless headset.
Either way, this is worth solving. Television is where a lot of people first notice their hearing loss, and it is where the friction lands on the rest of the household.
Amplified phones and phone connectivity
For anyone who finds phone calls difficult, amplified phones increase the caller’s volume well beyond what a standard handset can manage. Many also have visual ring indicators and larger buttons.
If you wear hearing aids, there is usually a better option. Most current hearing aids offer Bluetooth, so calls stream from your mobile straight into both hearing aids at once. Hearing a caller in both ears, at a volume set to your hearing loss, is a considerable improvement on holding a handset to one ear.
People who have been struggling with phone calls for years are frequently surprised this exists, and it is often already built into the hearing aids they own.
Remote microphones
A small microphone worn by the person you are listening to, or placed in the middle of a table, which sends their voice wirelessly to your hearing aids.
For difficult listening situations, meetings, restaurants, the car, a lecture, this is the most effective accessory available, because it removes the distance and the room from the equation entirely. It is also the most under-used.
Remote microphones and FM systems are widely used in classrooms for children with hearing difficulties, where they make a measurable difference to what a child hears over the teacher’s voice.
Alerting devices
Hearing loss makes it easy to miss the sounds that are supposed to get your attention. Alerting devices use something other than sound to do the job: flashing lights, vibration, or a bed shaker under the mattress.
Common options cover:
- Alarm clocks, with vibration or light
- Doorbells, with a flashing indicator
- Smoke alarms and safety alarms, which are the most important of these by a wide margin
- Phone calls and notifications
- Baby monitors
If you take one thing from this section, make it the smoke alarm. Standard smoke alarms are designed to wake someone with normal hearing, and anyone with significant hearing loss, particularly if they remove hearing aids at night, should have an alarm with a strobe or bed shaker. It is a small cost against a serious risk.
So are these a genuine alternative to hearing aids?
It depends entirely on what you are trying to solve.
If your difficulty is confined to one or two situations, television, the phone, hearing the doorbell, then yes, a device aimed at that situation may be all you need, and it will cost considerably less.
If you are finding conversation difficult across your day, at work, in company, in the car, at the shops, then no. Nothing in this list is programmed to your hearing loss, and none of it travels with you the way hearing aids do.
The honest version is this: if you are looking for an alternative to hearing aids because you are not ready for hearing aids, that is a completely reasonable place to be, and it is worth saying out loud at an appointment. There are more discreet options than most people expect, and there are sensible ways to start small. What we would not recommend is spending money on amplifiers to avoid a conversation that would have given you a better answer.
Which device is right for me?
It comes down to three things: the degree and shape of your hearing loss, the specific situations you are finding difficult, and whether you currently wear hearing aids.
A hearing assessment settles the first. A conversation about your week settles the second. Between them, the shortlist is usually short.
It is also worth asking about funding. Depending on your circumstances, support may be available through the Australian Government Hearing Services Program, the NDIS or Department of Veterans’ Affairs entitlements, and that can extend to some assistive devices rather than hearing aids alone.
Talk to us about your options
Tell us which situations you are struggling with and we will tell you what actually solves them, whether that is a hearing aid, an accessory, an assistive device or a combination.
Call 03 9800 5697 or book an appointment online.
