Your Audiology Tutorial: Amplified Phones

Under the Americans with Disabilities Act, individuals with documented hearing loss are eligible to receive a free amplified telephone.  These phones have controls for both volume and tone.  Funding is provided on state and federal levels.  In FL, an itemization for FTRI (Florida Telecommunications Relay, Inc.) appears on one's landline bill.  This small amount contributes to the subsidization of such programs.  Phones can be sent to the patient or they can visit a distribution center to pick it up.  While I was in graduate school, my classmates and I spent a semester providing tutorials on use of these phones at the League for the Hard of Hearing.

These days phones with onscreen captions have improved communication for the hearing impaired tremendously.  Organizations such as CaptionCall and CapTel have provided a transcription service (sometimes with a live operator) which allows every word the caller speaks to be read.  Most require Internet availability but CapTel offers a non-internet model as well.  You can also use this service on a cell phone.  Many patients opt for the landline models like the ones you see above, which contain voicemail that can be heard and read later. Some have a large visual display and others are even touchscreen.  My patients have considered these phones a godsend.

Before the pandemic, technicians would make appointments to install the phones in patient's homes and spend as much time needed to educate them.  Hopefully this practice will resume soon.

To get an amplified/captioned phone, your provider (audiologist, hearing aid dispenser, MD, PA, or nurse) will fill out an application with his or her credentials and verify your hearing impairment.  Typically, one free phone is provided.  Extras may run between $75 and $150.

https://captioncall.com/products/how-it-works

https://www.captel.com

https://www.ftri.org (FL residents).