Do You Hear What I Hear?
By Jim Grennan

While recently attending the wonderful, enlightening Solo and Small Firm Conference of our bar association, I had the opportunity to see many tools that can make the law practice more efficient and understandable to our clients and opponents. Those of you who did not attend also missed the defining difference between tools and toys. Those of you who love gadgets missed the greatest show on earth. I couldn’t resist showing my hearing tool to one of the expert speakers at the conference who encouraged me to write this article.

Like me, his father has a profound hearing loss and extreme difficulty in hearing a telephone conversation. Maybe you, your parents or others are having this very same difficulty with hearing a telephone conversation.

Now I may not hear what you hear, but I must hear with both ears if I am to understand the telephone conversation. For my landline telephone, I use a 2.4 GHz speaker telephone. When I practice from my home or wherever I may be, I use my cellular telephone number as my office telephone number. I’ll tell you why. I use this cellular telephone and loop. This telephone is one of the few that will permit me to use a loop, which goes around my neck like a necklace and plugs into the cellular phone. My digital hearing aides are equipped with a telephone coil. When I turn on the telecoils with my loop attached to my cellular telephone, I hear the caller’s voice in both of my ears.

An added benefit is that the telephone coil setting also eliminates nearly all extraneous noise. I can sit in a noisy restaurant and hear on my cellular telephone. It also permits me to talk hands free while driving – hands free from the telephone – not the steering wheel. As an added delight, the hearing aid company also sells a wrist watch with a bezel that permits me to turn my telephone coils on and off, and to raise and lower the volume of my hearing aids. At home, my cellular telephone is call forwarded to my landline as its speaker permits me to hear, and I do not have to wear the loop.

In addition to the necklace loop, there are loops available that loop various areas such as a church, a movie, your desk. With such a loop plugged into an amplifier, the telecoil gives access to the sound being transmitted. See www.hearingloop.org/loopAmerica.htm.

Landline telephones manufactured after 1989 must be compatible with telecoil use, and by 2005 all cellular telephones must also be so compatible. However, for those of us with profound hearing loss, any telecoil compatible telephone may not give us acceptable understanding of the person speaking. Unlike the use of a loop, such telecoil compatible telephones will only permit the use of one hearing aid, and they will not exclude the sounds in the environment where they are used.

If you only have a minimal hearing loss, you will most likely hear more than I hear while using assistive devices such as my cellular telephone and loop. However, for those of us unable to hear a telephone conversation, a hearing aid with telecoil, a loop and a cellular phone that accepts a loop may be the answer to your being able to hear.

If you have a physical challenge, come visit or join the OBA’s Lawyers with Physical Challenges Committee. Just give me a call on my cellular phone at (405) 642-5737 or an e-mail to jgrennan@swbell.net.

Mr. Grennan practices in Oklahoma City

…a loop may be the answer to your being able to hear.