Before the advent of today’s mobile technology i.e. the digital phones, there was no concept for text messaging. During 1990s mid, the technology changed & it was like something great for the Hard of Hearing community. The advent of digital phones in the market introduced the concept of text messaging. It allowed the deaf people to communicate with everyone for the first time.
Talking about the present age, phones aren’t only necessary for people like us. But, it is also a need for a large community with hearing disabilities.
Amplifying phone is a great solution
However, the technology is getting better for the rest of the world; it must be improved for the deaf people as well. The easiest solution to make the cell phones useful for such a community is to make them louder. For an amplifying phone, the solution is to make its volume adjustable up to 100 – 150dB. With for others, this intensity of sound may be somewhat painful. So, it is supposed to have a button via which we could switch to louder phone mode & by pressing it again, we could choose to come back to the normal mode.
If you love your existing phones, you can choose to attach with them the amplifiers. Now, this option is also available for hard of hearing community.
Recognize the callers with ease
As mentioned above, the phone for deaf, either mobile or in-line must have to support the louder volumes. It can also have a sort of bold visuals or vibration alerts so that it could inform. If you have anyone around you with hearing disability, you might have observed that these people like to extension bells. The solution to this is investing in a plug-in ringer so that to fix to the extension socket around the house. On the other hand, a few phones have LCD displays. It shows a caller ID which allows you to see who’s calling so you may answer accordingly.
Another useful thing to mention for hearing or visual impairments is that there are a few phones which are programmed to be much louder than normal to let you know the details of the person calling.
Another useful solution – TTY telephones
For the people with profound hearing impairment, inductive coupling or amplification may fail for them. In this regard, TRS or TTY may be the solution for you. It looks like a small computer with a keyboard & a display. It allows the users to use this in several amazing ways.
If the people on both sides have TTY phones, it supports the text messaging. Otherwise, if a person with a conventional phone wants to speak with the one having TTY phone, they still can. An operator is there to listen to the words & convert it to text to display it over TTY phone’s screen.
Goshawk – a UK based company, presented a solution to this as well. It is basically all about a hearing test for the user, which is deaf. It determines the level /frequency of sound he/she is able to hear. In this way, the audio in the phone is modified to that level so that they could hear it easily with the boosted audio frequencies.
So, the basic thing is that phones are useful for everyone but only if everyone out there could know they are ringing. One can get things like strobe lights with the desktop phones. It let them know about the incoming calls. But, the cells phone usually doesn’t support such things because of its size. However, there are solutions. One of them is discreet vibrating alert if you can’t hear your phone to be ringing. The desktop holders for the cell phones also serve the purpose. It allows the deaf to detect the incoming text or messages.
If someone has disabilities, it doesn’t mean that they are supposed to be cut off from others. We have a huge community of deaf people all across the world in every country. They are also in need to use the latest technologies & we must not forget this, even for a while.
