Alternatives to Hearing Aids

Hearing aids are a popular tool for those with all degrees of hearing loss. By sending amplified sound directly into your middle ear, hearing aids help you experience sounds you would have otherwise missed. But they are far from perfect, and you might need alternative methods as well, such as supplemental technology or visual communication systems.

Considerations

• Hearing aids amplify sound but cannot improve clarity. This makes it difficult to hear when there's background noise and some speech may still be hard to understand. Despite extensive research and improved technology, there is still no quick fix for hearing loss.

Cochlear Implantation

• Hearing aids amplify sound before sending it to the inner ear, or cochlea, for processing. However, in many deaf or hard-of-hearing people, sensory cells within the cochlea are damaged or destroyed completely. During cochlear implant surgery, the implant bypasses the outer ear, replaces the inner ear and communicates directly with the brain. If successful, the implant exposes even profoundly deaf people to sound. With practice and therapy, you can learn how to process and understand sound.

  Because the microphone technology is similar, cochlear implant users often complain of the same problems as hearing aid users, including difficulty hearing in noisy background situations. Also, if the implant is unsuccessful, you will be completely and permanently deaf, since the implant destroys all residual hearing while being inserted. Not all deaf people are candidates for cochlear implants. Extensive testing and research is necessary before implantation surgery is an option.

Assistive Listening Devices

• Assistive listening devices, also known as FM systems, consist of a microphone, transmitter and receiver. FM systems are often used in classrooms by children with mild and moderate hearing losses, but they can be helpful for a range of ages and hearing levels. The system requires a microphone to be worn by the speaker, whose speech is then transmitted directly to a receiver, either through generic headphones or attachments that sync the transmissions with your hearing aids. FM systems are especially helpful in reducing background noise because of the close-range microphone and therefore make speech more intelligible.

Cued Speech

• Cued speech is a visual system of hand signals that correspond with the sounds of speech and aid with listening and lipreading. Cues are especially useful for clarifying phonemes like "b" and "p" which, for a deaf person reading lips, would otherwise look identical.

  In a conversation involving cued speech, the speaker forms the hand cues simultaneously with his spoken words. These cues, along with lipreading, give the deaf person visual access to the sounds of spoken language.

Sign Language

• Sign languages are 100 percent visual modes of communication. Because they use grammar and vocabulary based on hand shape, location and movement, sign languages make information fully accessible to those who are deaf or hard of hearing. Sign languages are complex and complete languages and are not universal; they vary from country to country or even regionally. Just like any spoken language, sign language can only be mastered with a lot of practice.