If you’ve been in our offices you may have noticed that we have various captioned telephones on display. These are captioned telephones that are available to you at no cost. That’s right, you do not need to pay for them! As long as you have hearing loss you qualify for a no cost captioned phone. Our office works with Caption Call and Captel. Both have great phones and service!
They have a variety of models available to you and even have a phone app as well to help when answering calls on your cellphone. The larger models you see in our office have a screen that captions your conversation so you can read along while listening. These phones also have the option to amplify the phone call as well so that you can turn up the phone volume and read the captions to better hear and understand what the person is saying on the other end. The phones can even be programmed to better fit your individual hearing loss. Captioned phones are a great resource for those with hearing loss as hearing on the phone is often one of the biggest complaints from those with hearing loss, even with the use of hearing aids. With typical phones it can be hard to distinguish speech and there are no visual cues to help you understand speech better.
So how do you get one of these captioned phones? The process is actually pretty simple. Just let your audiologist know that you are interested in a captioned phone for your home and they will take it from there! Once you have let us know you would like a phone, your audiologist will complete a referral to either Caption Call or Captel and certify that you have a hearing loss and are eligible. Caption Call or Captel will then reach out to you directly within a few business days and they will help you decide which model phone fits your needs the best and they will set up a time to come to your house to install it. They install it for you and teach you how to use it.
If you have hearing loss and struggle on the telephone than this is a great option for you. Many of our patients find the captioned phones very helpful. If you have any questions about captioned phones, let your audiologist know the next time you are in and we can show you our in office demo phone as well as help you get set up with one.
Author Michaela Nikolai, AuD Michaela is a Doctor of Audiology at Andros ENT & Sleep center.