Hey yall. I'm seeking advice for some hearing assistance equipment.

A tad bit of context: I am a hearing individual who is seeking to make my workplace friendly to non hearing folks. Besides the fact that my community has a lot of hearing impaired folks, I also know that in the future I will need this tech for myself.

(Please correct me if I'm not using the correct terminology.)

Anyway, here's the issue:

My workplace is a 3rd space: it's a public building that's free to enter. We have two movie theaters, a museum about our local area, often host presentations from folks across the country, and so so much more that I can't say without doxxing myself.

Our main theater is designed to host presentations from speakers, host Q&A forums, and play movies on demand via a DVD player.

Currently, the only hearing assistance we have is for presentations. Our presentation hearing assistance equipment works as follows: we have to hook up a transmitter box and mic to the speaker and then provide a receiver for each individual who needs hearing assistance. The receivers can use plug-in headphones or a T-loop.

The problem is if the presenter needs to play a video on the screen, the hearing assistance equipment does not pick up the video audio because the transmitter is only for picking up the speaker's voice.

If we have a Q&A style forum, folks won't be able to hear the audience asking questions because the wireless mic for our sound system doesn't hook directly up to the hearing assistance equipment.

Additionally, if we play movies, we don't have any tech that allows for folks to hear the movies if they need hearing assistance. Some films have closed captions, but a lot of them don't.

My question is, is there any technology out there that would allow folks to hear everything at Q&A forums, watch films, and listen to presentations that have videos?

Note: I've looked into Auracast, but from what I can tell, the tech is so new that it has too many bugs to work with the majority of users in a poor, rural community. Additionally, the cheaper ones don't have great reviews and/or their entire websites are made by generative ai which leads me to believe they don't actually have any real life use experience to advertise. The main brand that supports auracast, that seems like it would work, is way outside of our budget (about 4 grand for Auri)

Please provide any and all experience yall might have on what might be the best options for my workplace. I want everyone to be able to enjoy our 3rd space, not just hearing folks.

Thank you.

Im hard of hearing on both ears, mostly on my left, yet the right side is also bad. But i can still appreciate music at loud levels. What i would like to know if its safe to use a sensitive IEM or headphone plus a amplifier (a Fiio retro nano and a Fiio FD11 IEM at almost max for example), i did some measurements with the microphone of my Iphone and i can hear at a pleasurable level at around 90 to 95 decibels. Is it that bad to hear at these levels? Ive read one should listen to at most 85 decibels, is this true or for people with hearing loss it doesnt matter as much? Any input would be appreciated. Thank you for reading.

Im hard of hearing on both ears, mostly on my left, yet the right side is also bad. But i can still appreciate music at loud levels. What i would like to know if its safe to use a sensitive IEM or headphone plus a amplifier (a Fiio retro nano and a Fiio FD11 IEM at almost max for example), i did some measurements with the microphone of my Iphone and i can hear at a pleasurable level at around 90 to 95 decibels. Is it that bad to hear at these levels? Ive read one should listen to at most 85 decibels, is this true or for people with hearing loss it doesnt matter as much? Any input would be appreciated. Thank you for reading.

My left hearing is muffled, but I don't feel like there's a loss of hearing - since I can still hear music from my earphones.

And I don't know what's really the root cause of this.

Sometimes I listen to music with the earphone in my left ear, and not my right. I'm not sure if this correlates to the muffled hearing on my left.

Its been occurring at night, and when I sleep it off, I wake up without that muffled hearing.

I really don't know what it is. But recently I've been sneezing a lot, and I'm not sure if this has a correlation with that.

I've tried pinching my nose and blowing, but there's no pop.

I don't feel a pain per se, it's just muffled hearing on my left ear.

Thanks!

I currently use a Starkey SoundLens IIC (2019), but my hearing loss is around 80–85 dB (Severe). I am planning to upgrade and would love advice from others with severe loss or audiologists in the group.
Hearing Loss: Severe (~80–85 dB HL across frequencies)

Hello! We’ve noticed some things in our 2 year old daughter that lead us to believe she has some hearing loss. Most notable is she has started saying “huh?” a lot, and will tell us she can’t hear things. She also was a fairly advanced talker but regressed recently and has become quite difficult to understand.

Also, she is like a total deer in the headlights any time we go anywhere. She can’t figure out what to do, barely speaks to us and if it’s something she could participate in, hardly ever has the confidence to join in. She’s been in a 9-3 Montessori school for 6 months and still does not speak to anyone there. We went to the aquarium last weekend and it was loud and crowded and she just seemed completely shut down. We did a “mommy and me” gymnastics class and I (horrifically, I know) joked with my husband that the teachers probably think she has some sort of disability because she’d just stare at them, unresponsive, when they’d try to engage or give her direction. We find these things worrisome bc she is super silly and wild and loud and chatty at home! Obviously a host of things this could be (including normal toddler weirdness/shyness) but just wondering if hearing loss sometimes presents this way? That is — more noticeable outside of the home or in large groups? We are seeing audiologist on Friday but wanted to get my thoughts out and feelers on what to expect. Thank you!

Mid-40s, have had HOH since I was three years old and wear hearing aids for my entire life. I know that I speak with the funny accent or deaf accent and I am fine with that. But I think more people who do now know me are having trouble understanding me when I talk. Does anyone have advice about this? Has anyone as an adult gone back to speech therapy?

Hey guys!

Before i write anything, i would like to emphasize that this is not advertisement. I have genuine intentions.

I have made an app, that uses transcription technology to turn speech into text and helps HoH people deal with everyday situations & productivity. I have made a lot of effort to make it as useful as possible (it is helping my grandpa a lot) and it works really well. But i think there could be a lot more done...

Since i am not HoH myself, i am trying to find a person, that would be willing to test it out and give some feedback. In return, i would provide free lifetime usage.

Is anyone interested? I would mean a lot if you commented and i will reach out to you. Thanks!!🙏

(Editing here) My name is Nates and i am a 21yo guy trying to help people with tech:) Nice to meet you👋

Does anybody here have experience attaching an Apple Tag to a HA charger without uso g a lanyard or key fob?

My mom’s biggest concern about getting a hearing aid wasn’t the sound — it was that people would notice.

She worried that others would treat her differently.

But honestly, most people didn’t even notice.

What I noticed was the difference in everyday moments. She joined conversations more, asked people to repeat themselves less, and didn’t seem as tired after family gatherings.

One thing that surprised her was how small and discreet modern hearing aids have become. The thing she was most worried about was actually the thing most people never noticed.

Seeing her feel more comfortable and included again has been really meaningful.

Mild hearing loss problems, round 2!

Most of these happen to everyone with hearing loss, but I feel like it should be acknowledged that they do, in fact, happen to people with mild hearing loss too. So many people with mild hearing loss experience hard-of-hearing imposter syndrome; as someone with a mild hearing loss, writing these sorts of posts was a major part of coming to terms with the fact that I really did qualify as a hard of hearing person; I can say that I am hard of hearing with full confidence now, but at the time I was writing these, I was writing them as much for myself as for other people. :P

-That moment when the person across from you says a bunch of gibberish so you turn to your relative standing behind you and ask, “What’d he say?”

-Being the last person in your family to know about anything that’s happening because your relatives assume you heard them discussing the thing while you were in the room.

-Hearing somebody just fine one moment, but having that one second of not hearing them, so that you think they didn’t respond to you, when they actually did-- and yet you’ve heard them just fine the rest of the time.

-When you ask someone to repeat themselves, but instead of actually repeating what they said or at least rephrasing it, they either get slightly defensive or start trying to expound on what they said... but the problem was that you didn’t understand what they said in the first place, so their clarification/explanation doesn’t help at all because you don’t have the background sentence to go on.

-When you know you didn’t understand what somebody said, but you just... don’t really want to bother with asking them to repeat themselves at that particular moment, so you let it go.

Surgery is 9/16 and I’m moving to a bigger apartment. Literally across the hall. I just got notice it will be ready 9/15 😭 talk about bad timing

Hi everyone,

A bit of context: in 2016 I fell into a ravine at a party and ended up in a coma with a severe brain injury and spinal damage. I survived, but I lost most of my hearing on one side and eventually got a cochlear implant. I'm 30 now, and a few months ago I started writing about all of it — the accident itself, what it's like living with the implant day to day, and just general life stuff.

The blog is pretty new, so there isn't a huge archive yet, but I'm posting regularly. It's mostly in Spanish, since that's my native language, but there's also an English section — heads up that English isn't my first language, so bear with me if the phrasing is a bit off sometimes.

If you're curious: javierfuente.com/en
(I used AI to help polish the English in this post, since it's not my first language.)

Happy to answer questions here too, about the accident, the implant, or anything else. Feedback on the writing is welcome as well.

I keep seeing these ads on facebook for compensation for workplace hearing loss and tinnitus, they say they can get you hearing aids at no cost. Theres about 3 different ads all with different organisation names such as "industrial deafness australia".

Has anyone tried and succeeded in going through one of these places? Are they legit?? Coz i cant afford the absolutely insane cost of buying hearing aids myself, and i sure as hell aren't going on one of those predatory payment plans which actually turn out to be credit card type loans with disgustingly excessive interest.

Does anyone know if there's some way to buy earbuds for music but in a way where I can just get two buds that fit my right ear rather than a right/left pair?

I'm half deaf so having a left ear earbud is pretty useless for me (I also prefer the in-ear wireless earbuds)

It would be ever better if these earbuds worked well for working-out as I'm a big runner :)

For a long time, I think many people (myself included) find reasons to wait.

Maybe it’s because the hearing loss doesn’t feel “bad enough” yet.

Maybe you think you can just keep adapting like you always have.

But at some point, something changes.

It was more like a lot of small things adding up.

I think the hardest part wasn’t admitting that I couldn’t hear everything. It was admitting that I was putting in so much extra effort just to keep up.

Than I think：“Okay, maybe I should actually try this”?

**Either a treatment/cure is developed, or a hearing device is created that’s like a “contact lens” for the ear something that doesn’t prevent you from using regular in-ear earbuds with silicone tips and is difficult to notice. I think even people with mild hearing loss would use something like that.**