Comment by shagie
16 hours ago
https://youtu.be/Pe2ugye7Ya4?si=qhGPselIm7sZkXyP&t=558 (
My father has hearing aids and in some environments, it doesn't work well (directional vs omnidirectional ... but directional requires the person to directly address him while omnidirectional tends to pick up too much background clutter). In doctors offices (for example) he has handed his phone in dictation mode to the receptionist and asked them to speak to it and then he reads the transcription and responds... and this repeats. In a restaurant environment, sometimes another person orders for him.
This sort of thing could be useful in such cases.
Has he tried these? https://www.fortell.com/
Or are they the directional ones you were referring to?
He has proper hearing aids - I'm not sure of the specific brand. They can be controlled via an app (and bluetooth). He's got a clip on microphone that goes directly to the hearing aids which sometimes goes on the table if he remembers to bring it so that we can talk to it and it does a better job... it's also used when he and my mother are out cycling and my mother wears it clipped to her shirt so that he can hear what she says.
One of the features that the app can control is the "environment". When out and about it's set to omnidirectional so that someone next to him doesn't need to be talking directly to him, however that picks up a lot of background and when in a building that causes.
He's also wired up their house with an audio loop. There's a microphone at my mother's craft desk that goes directly to the hearing loop and he can hear it anywhere in the main rooms of the house.
However, going out to places where he needs to be able to talk to people with less assistive technology available, things like the dictation mode on the phone area used. Also, sometimes he'll miss words (the start of a sentence until he realizes someone is talking to him, turns his head and the directional hearing aid mode gets them in focus). Being able to review the last 15 seconds of what was said on his iWatch would a technology that he would use.