The Seven Sisters of the Hearing Aid Industry
When you start thinking about buying a hearing aid, the choices can be dizzying. On first look, you would think there are hundreds of manufacturers. The reality is simpler. While there are scores of name brands, in fact only seven manufacturers control about 90 percent of the worldwide market for hearing aids. Read more
Why Don’t They Lock the ‘Off’ Switch?
Here’s a small gripe. I recently bought a SoundWizard personal microphone and amplifying system from Hi-Tec. It’s a very cool multi-purpose device. It’s got two 3.5 mm plugs for your neckloop, earpods or headphones. Read more
How Many of Us Are There?
The hearing-impaired population is huge and growing. But a surprisingly small percentage of people who need hearing aids choose to use them. Read more
A Comment on Amplified Phone Design
You can tell it’s an amplified phone by the size of the buttons. A lot of hearing impaired people are old, and a lot of old people also have trouble with their vision. Therefore, most amplified phones are designed with HUGE buttons with ENORMOUS numbers on them. It’s great the manufacturers can kill two birds with one stone. But consumers aren’t birds. I don’t need the big buttons, thank you. Read more
Bells and Whistles: My Search for the Perfect Amplified Phone
I recently went through a long process acquiring an amplified phone. If you’re a phone junkie like I am, you will want all the bells and whistles, even the ones you rarely use. Until recently, there wasn’t much to choose from. Perhaps the market for these souped-up devices was just so small, or the technology to make phones work well for hearing-impaired people was so expensive, that most phone manufacturers didn’t bother. However, recently we have seen an increasing number of options available, from both traditional and new suppliers. Read more