Amplicom Enters North American Market With PowerTel 500 Amplified Phone For Consumers Who Need Hearing Assistance

Amplicom, the German supplier of amplified telephones and other assistive listening devices (ALDs) for hard-of-hearing consumers, has entered the North American market with first shipments of its family of PowerTel corded and cordless amplified phones. Amplicom USA, based in New York, said the new phones meet the Telecommunications Industry Association’s TIA-1083 hearing-aid compatibility standard and are among the few amplified phones to offer DECT 6.0 technology, the interference-free frequency that is standard in Europe but only recently being widely adopted in North America.

The initial entry in the product line, the PowerTel 500, is a cordless handset with hands-free speakerphone, caller ID, and a large two-line illuminated display. It provides amplified volume of up to 50 dB and offers five frequency settings. Featuring Amplicom’s yourSOUND technology, the PowerTel unit has settings on the PowerTel unit that can be adjusted and set for multiple hearing profiles, enabling each member of the household can switch to his or her own preferred volume and frequency.

Suggested retail for the PowerTel 500 is $139.95. Amplicom also said it will soon start shipping the PowerTel 501, an expandable handset that works with all cordless base PowerTel phones, for $89.95, as well as a series of combination telephone and answering machines. It enters a competitive but by no means crowded market for amplified phones, including other vendors such as Clarity Products and ClearSounds.

Live Captions of Your Phone Conversations Are Now Available On Your iPhone From Hamilton Web CapTel

Hamilton Web CapTel has introduced Mobile CapTel, an iPhone app enabling you to get live, real-time captions of telephone conversations you are having on your iPhone. Web CapTel is an amazing, free service available to anyone in the U.S.  It lets you get real-time captions over the web for any phone conversation you may have. You sign up for a free Web Captel account and, when you make a phone call, let the Hamilton relay service know you want a captioned call. Their captioning expert, aided by voice-recognition software, listens in and supplies the live captions of your conversation on your computer screen.

The new Hamilton Mobile Captel service, currently available on any 3G/3GS iPhone, shows the captions on the iPhone screen. Users download the Mobile Captel iPhone application from Apple’s iPhone App Store and use it to log onto their Web Captel accounts. Because the service works with iPhone-compatible headsets (either wired or Bluetooth), you can speak and hear while looking at the screen in your hand. Read more

Clarity Cordless Phone Provides Maximum Amplification with Mobility

Amplification of a bad signal is worse than no amplification at all, and until recently many amplified phones made comprehension more difficult, not easier, for people with hearing loss. Recent advances in digital sound shaping technology borrowed from the digital signal processing in hearing aids have improved the situation markedly in wireline phones. But jamming all that processing power and software into a cordless handset has been a challenge. Clarity Products decided to tackle the problem head on, and people with hearing loss can be glad the company did. The Clarity Professional C4230 5.8GHz Cordless Amplified Phone not only provides up to 50 decibels of amplification, but also provides a very clear signal through its wireless handset. Read more

Note To Steve Jobs: Why Isn’t The Apple iPhone Hearing-Aid Compatible?

I can’t believe Apple failed to make its iPhone compatible with either hearing aids or cochlear implants. I’m in the market for a mobile phone again and just discovered the lack of compatibility. Given all the hype surrounding the iPhone launch, I’m surprised there haven’t been more complaints. Read more

Agilent Makes It Easy To Design Hearing-Aid Compatible Cell Phones

Now there’s no excuse. Agilent Technologies has come up with a design system enabling manufacturers of mobile phones to easily ensure their handsets meet all the hearing-aid-compatibility (HAC) standards mandated by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). Read more

How To Find A Hearing-Aid-Compatible Mobile Phone

Bryan Lockwood has written in with a tip on a site that makes it very easy to find out whether the mobile phone you are shopping for will be compatible with your hearing aids. PhoneScoop.com has a phone finder which lets you search for hearing-aid compatible phones, including their ‘M’ and ‘T’ ratings. Read more

Check Out ‘The Mobile Phone Challenge’ At Healthy Hearing

Dr. Paul Dybala, who runs two excellent web sites for hard-of-hearing consumers and hearing health professionals — Healthy Hearing and Audiology Online — asked me to contribute an article to Healthy Hearing on my experiences shopping for mobile phones that would work with my powerful hearing aids. It was a fun exercise and has driven a lot of traffic to Hearing Mojo. It’s entitled ‘The Mobile Phone Challenge.’ Check it out!

Vortis Cell Phone Antenna Reduces Hearing-Aid Interference

A start-up company based in Glasgow, Scotland, has developed an innovative antenna technology eliminating the electrical interference that can make cell phones impossible to use with hearing aids. Dual-antenna array technology built into the Vortis Technologies Ltd. antenna radiates electrical signals in a figure-eight pattern out and away from the user’s head and hearing aids. Read more

ClearSounds IL40: An In-Line Telephone Amplifer For All Seasons

Usually hotel telephones are a nightmare for me. They almost never work, even with my telecoil setting turned on and my hearing-aid volume set as high as it will go. (And then, insult is added to injury when the first call I want to make is to complain about the closed-captioning on the TV set not working, but I have to schlepp to the front desk in person to complain instead). I have the same problem with phones I try to use at clients, at friends’ houses… anywhere other than home, where I can rely on my trusty amplified desktop phone. But on our recent trip to New York, I tried out a ClearSounds IL40 Portable Telephone Amplifier, and now I believe my hotel phone problems may have disappeared forever. Read more

Hearing Aids And Cellphones: One Step Forward, Half A Step Back

Making a cellphone easy to use with a hearing aid is devilishly hard. Both devices are packed with so many chips and other digital electronics that electromagnetic interference causing feedback, static and distortion is bound to occur in one or both devices. Last week, the cellphone/hearing-aid industry coalition that is racing to meet Federal Communications Commission (FCC) requirements for hearing-aid compatibility issued a good-news, bad-news update. Read more

Next Page »