Technology & Hearing Devices for “Surviving the Holidays With Hearing Loss”
On Saturday, December 17, 2022 the HLAA-TC Board of Directors presented various aspects related to “Surviving the Holidays with Hearing Loss.” Three major areas were covered: 1) Technology and hearing devices ; 2) Hearing Aid maintenance (for caregivers): 3) Sharing holiday stories. Below are links associated with the information discussed regarding technology and hearing devices.
Technology and hearing devices
When it comes to using technology like smart phones and computers to help with hearing, there are major categories that this technology works best for (for our purposes I will just talk about the first two categories and on the blog I have provided links for all four categories):
- Transcription (definition: a written or printed representation of something)
- Captions (open and closed captions are time coded and closed captions can be turned on and off while open captions are a part of the video. Live captions are displayed in real time and are either computer- generated or human-generated).
- Syncing with hearing aids
- Understanding phone calls
Transcription Apps
Best Free Speech to Text Software for Android, Windows and iOS: https://www.folio3.ai/blog/best-free-speech-to-text-software/
Apple Dictation in the Notes App- Apple Dictation/Notes App is one of the best free speech to text software that comes built-in with most Apple devices. Just open a Note and press the microphone on the keyboard to start dictation/transcription.
Group Transcribe: A Microsoft Garage Product: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/group-transcribe/id1527145885
How to use the new Live Captions in iOS 16: https://mashable.com/article/apple-ios-live-captions
Otter.ai- Voice Meeting Notes & Real-time Transcription: https://otter.ai/
Live Transcribe (for Android): https://www.android.com/accessibility/live-transcribe/
Ava: an instant transcription app for the computer and devices. Available on iOS and Android: https://www.ava.me/
Cardzilla: transcription app that displays text large on screen. Google Store and Apple Store
Captioning Apps/Websites
To be able to have all video and audio captioned, use the Google Chrome browser (this only works on a computer) and turn on “Live Captions” which is Google’s AI version of live captions. As long as you run the program on Chrome (Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, any video or audio platform (YouTube, Vimeo, Spotify, etc.) the video or audio will be live captioned by AI. Read this help article by Google to find out how to easily turn live captions on.
Syncing with Hearing Aids
Your audiologist and hearing aid manuals are the top places to go for this information. However, you can find additional information for iPhones here: https://support.apple.com/guide/iphone/hearing-devices-iph470b1833/ios and you can find additional information on syncing hearing aids to Android phones, here: https://support.google.com/accessibility/android/answer/9426888?hl=en
Understanding Phone Calls
https://rogervoice.com/en/ Captions phone calls (on smart phones).
https://www.innocaption.com/ Captions phone calls (on smart phones).
https://apps.apple.com/us/app/clearcaptions-mobile/id1389230518 ClearCaptions Mobile- captions phone calls (on smart phones).
https://apps.apple.com/us/app/olelo-captioned-calls/id1529823668 Olelo. Captions phone calls (on smart phones).
https://www.captel.com/ CapTel: a special landline phone that captions phone calls.
https://captioncall.com/ CaptionCall: a special landline phone that captions phone calls.
Other Apps and websites
There are many apps out there that cover various features that help with Hearing Loss:
https://www.soundprint.co/ SoundPrint- find decibel levels of nearby places.
Roger Pen (by Phonak)