Article - Staying Alert

Losing your hearing can be a scary and difficult prospect. Among many other daily tasks, it can become more complicated to carry on telephone conversations or hear important sounds inside your home, such as alarms, bells, or other auditory signals. Missing the telephone or important sounds in the best scenarios can be simply annoying, and in the worst, quite dangerous. However, losing your hearing doesn't mean you have to lose touch.

The staff at Dynamic Living has identified some products, tips and ideas to ensure that you can carry on telephone conversations with greater ease and don't miss important signals and alarms inside your home.

On the phone
The telephone is an important tool to keep in touch with the outside world.

Why risk missing a phone call just because you are in the laundry room, or in the attic where you can't hear the phone ringing?

• Take along a Silent Call Vibrating Pager and you will know immediately whenever the phone is ringing! A transmitting device hooks into your phone line and sends an alert to the pager/receiver as soon as the call comes in.

• Carry a cordless telephone with a vibrating ringer.

• If you are in the same room performing a noisy task, like vacuuming, a telephone ring amplifier with flash might do the trick. This item increases the ring volume of your telephone and has a brightly flashing indicator to get your attention.

Sometimes it can be hard to hear the person on the other end of the phone.

• Amplified telephones and telephone accessories increase the volume of your handset or speakerphone. While most phones offer 5 to 10 decibels (dB) amplification, phones designed for people who are hearing impaired can offer up to 50dB, or more than 100 times the volume of a standard phone.

• Some amplified telephones also offer tone control (tone refers to the pitch of the sound), allowing the user to amplify those tones that will enable them to hear a broader range of sounds. When the tone is adjusted properly an additional volume boost might not be necessary.

• It might be appropriate to move the phone to another location, away from the dishwasher or other distracting noises that make it difficult to hear.

Sounds around the home

Whether you are hearing impaired, vacuuming or in the garage, you don't want to miss something because you didn't hear the alert. These signalers may alert you with a louder horn, a strobe light, by flashing a lamp or vibrating a pager-like receiver.

• Doorbell/knock signalers: It can be so frustrating when you miss a delivery or a friend who stopped by unexpectedly. Door knock and doorbell signalers help you to always "hear" someone at the door. Door knock signalers detect vibrations on your door and alert you with both strobe light capabilities and loud chimes. Doorbell signalers can either connect to the wiring of your current doorbell or replace your current doorbell entirely.

• Fire/Smoke alarm signalers: In an emergency, you must be able to detect the most important alarm in your house. Some alarms simply aren't loud enough or may be too high-pitched to hear properly. Or maybe you are a very deep sleeper. Fire/Smoke detectors for people with hearing loss alert you whenever there is a fire (or smoke) using either strobe lights, extra loud horns or both.

• Sound alerts - Imagine you are doing noisy housework (dishes, vacuuming, etc.), or there's a lawnmower outside - how would you ever hear your child or grandchild crying over all that racket? Baby Cry or Sound Signalers notify you whenever the monitor hears ongoing noise in the room.

• Weather Alerts - Many of us fear natural disasters taking us by surprise. Maybe we haven't listened to the news in a while or perhaps no one has contacted us to make us aware that hurricane, blizzard, or tornado conditions were coming our way. This worry may be eased using a weather alert system. These systems monitor the NOAA Emergency Broadcast System 24/7 and can alert you visually or by auditory signal if threatening weather is on its way.

• All-in-one systems can be used with multiple alerting devices (including most of the types of devices mentioned above) and may be a good option for those who want one system to take care of all their needs.

While losing your hearing may be a fact of life, losing the ability to be alerted to everyday situations doesn't need to be. Specially designed telephones and alerting devices can make all the difference in lowering concerns and frustrations about not being able to hear common sounds clearly. Just because you are losing some hearing doesn't mean you have to lose your ability to know what's going on around you.

© Copyright 2007 Dynamic Living, Inc.
Dynamic Living Newsletter may only be redistributed in its unedited form. Written permission from the editor must be obtained to reprint or cite the information contained within this newsletter.

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