Picking the Right Cell Phone if You Use a Hearing Aid

Hearing aids have not in the past always worked well with cellular phones, because of electronic interference between the 2 devices that caused static, whistling or squealing noises, or lost words. Fortunately, improvements in technology and new government regulations have made the question “Will this phone work with my hearing aid?” simpler to answer. The regulations mandated new labeling requirements and ratings that help you to easily find a mobile phone that works well with your hearing aid.

To understand how this rating system works, you should first understand the two modes that hearing aids work in – M mode (for microphone) and T mode (for telecoil). In M mode, your hearing aid uses its built-in microphone to pick up audible sounds from the environment and amplify them so that you can hear them. In T mode, the hearing aid instead uses an inductive process to pick up electromagnetic signals inside the phone directly, without the need for a microphone. Roughly 60 percent of all mobile phones sold in the US have a telecoil (T) mode.

Under the new regulations, these two modes of operation have ratings that range from 1 (the lowest sensitivity) to 4 (the highest sensitivity). To be sold in the United States as hearing aid compatible (HAC), a mobile phone or cordless handset must have a rating of at least M3 or T3.

In addition, many hearing aids (and cochlear implants) have a similar M and T rating to measure their sensitivity and their resistance to radio frequency interference. When shopping for a phone, to determine its compatibility with your hearing aid, simply add its M and T ratings together with those of the phone to create a combined rating. A sum of 6 or more makes a solid pairing. That hearing aid and mobile phone combination should work well for you. If the combined rating is 5, this combination is considered normal and suitable for most regular phone use. A combined rating of 4 is considered usable for brief calls, but may not be suitable for extended phone use.

If you are shopping for a mobile phone online, you can usually use this combined rating to determine how compatible the phone you are interested in buying will be with your hearing aid. In the end, nothing beats a real world test so you may want to wear your hearing aid to the cell phone shop and test out a few different phone in real conditions.