These days, there’s an app for everything. You can use apps on your phone to count your steps, order coffee, edit photos and even help you navigate your hearing loss.
How Does Hearing Loss Impact Your Life?
Hearing loss can reduce your background awareness and make it more difficult to understand verbal communication. The impact of these difficulties can range from trouble at school or work to exhaustion and stress at the end of the day.
Because hearing loss can significantly impact your life, taking advantage of the technologies available to you is crucial. Not only can hearing aids collect and amplify speech and suppress background noise to increase clarity of communication, but smartphone apps can protect your hearing, increase ease of communication and alert you to important background information.
Apps to Protect Your Hearing
There are currently more than 1.5 billion people with hearing loss. While some sources of hearing loss, such as age-related or genetic factors, cannot be prevented, you have more control over noise-related hearing loss.
Decibel detectors are one type of app everyone should have on their smartphone. The handy detectors measure sound (in decibels) in the environment around you. You can use these measurements to protect your hearing. For instance, if the detector tells you that the sound in the Camden Opera House reaches 100 decibels (dB), you’ll know to bring earplugs to your next show.
The Centers for Disease Control lists the threshold for hearing damage as noise above 70 dB over a prolonged period or above 120 dB immediately. To help you prevent hearing damage, use your decibel detector to keep your noise exposure below the 70 dB threshold.
Apps to Increase Ease of Communication
When hearing loss prevents you from following conversation during a work meeting or an outing with your friends, speech-to-text apps can greatly help. Speech-to-text apps collect verbal communication in the environment around you and translate it into text. These apps can be especially helpful during video calls as many softwares have built-in speech-to-text technologies.
Apps to Alert You to Background Information
Sound alert apps are among the best types of apps to help you navigate your life with hearing loss. Sound alert apps listen for important background information like doorbells, kitchen timers and cars honking and alert you via alternative sensory notifications. Rather than relying only on your ears to keep you aware, sound alert apps will vibrate or flashlights to keep you informed.
Making use of your smartphone’s ability to protect your hearing, increase your ease of communication and alert you to background noise will help you navigate your life with hearing loss. For more information on treating your hearing loss, contact Gary D. Schwartzberg, Au.D., Doctor of Audiology today to make an appointment with one of our specialists.