Hints and Tips for People with Hearing Loss

Here's a collection of hearing-related hints and tips. Hope some of them are helpful to you. By the way, if you have a favorite tip that you'd like added to this list, please email it to me.

Free Hearing Aid Batteries

This web site has free hearing aid batteries.  It is only certain ones, but if your aids eat batteries, it might be worth a look:

http://www.heartheworld.com/free_batteries.htm

Voice Answering Machine Messages

This is for you who have trouble hearing the messages on your

answering machine AND if you have 2 phones. Use the other line

and call the line with the answering machine.  Your remote code

allows you to hear the messages and it may be easier thru the

phone than directly.  

Use a Chat Room

People who generally require a lot of repetition or require many things to be written in order to understand should consider using a private chat room to communicate. It requires only two browser-equipped computers and either internet access or chat software.

Multiple Phone Numbers on One Line

Do you have a voice telephone and a TTY sharing a single line? And you don't want to answer the phone, because you don't know if it's a voice call or a TTY call? If so, you should look into getting two phone numbers connected to your phone line. One phone number is for the TTY and the other for the voice call. The two numbers have distinctive rings, so it's easy to tell whether an incoming call is for the voice phone or TTY. The feature has different names, depending on your phone company. It is widely available, and costs just a couple of dollars a month. I'm wondering why most people (including me until just recently) have never heard of this.

Use the Relay to Retrieve VoiceMail Messages

You can ask the relay operator to retrieve your voice mail messages. Just follow the following procedure:

- give the operator the phone number and any required PIN

- explain how to access the system, including how to get new messages