FCC Proposes to Update Standards for Hearing Aid Compatible Wireless Phones
The Federal Communications Commission has proposed to update the technical standard by which it evaluates the compatibility of wireless telephones and hearing aids.
In times past, many people with hearing aids had trouble using the telephone. It was necessary to hold the telephone earpiece close to the microphone in the hearing aid. But the hearing aid picked up a lot of stray noise, and sometimes produced squealing feedback. The first technical fix was a special coil of wire in the hearing aid that couples electromagnetically to the earpiece or another coil in the telephone. Instead of the telephone receiver converting the incoming voice signal to sound, and the hearing aid microphone converting it back to electricity for amplification, the signal passes in electrical form directly from one coil to the other. This largely eliminates background noise and feedback, and gives far clearer reception. A telephone equipped with the right kind of coil is said to be “hearing aid compatible.” But the technical solution ran into an economic problem. While people with hearing aids could easily put hearing aid compatible telephones in their homes, those telephones were scarce elsewhere. The institutions responsible for putting phones into places like hotels, workplaces, public libraries, etc., had little incentive to spend more for hearing aid compatible equipment. This kind of stand-off rarely goes away without regulation.