Where Can I Buy Hearing Equipment And What Should I Look Out For?
Obtaining the right advice and information before you buy hearing equipment is always recommended, by either seeking help from your GP, medical centre or social services department, who most likely will send you to an audiologist for a formal and complete hearing test.
There is now an extensive range of hearing equipment available from a battery to digital hearing aid to different types of behind the ear and in the ear hearing aid products.
Digital hearing aid equipment for the deaf and hard of hearing contains a tiny custom programmed chip and offer the best way to match a particular patient’s hearing loss with the precise amplification needed by separating the incoming sound into discreet bands or channels, each of which can be processed independently. Some hearing aids can be integrated with Bluetooth systems.
Purchasing hearing equipment and in particular a hearing aid can be a difficult and unbudgeted expense.
The first point to consider when buying a hearing aid or hearing equipment system, is the average price of these products . It will be hard to estimate the cost involved without knowing the severity of your hearing loss or certain features you may require.
The National Health Service (NHS) provides hearing aids on loan, for free, and also maintains them free of charge. You also have the right to have your hearing assessed. You can’t get disposable hearing aids on the NHS and you can’t usually get the tiny hearing aids that fit completely in the ear canal. You can’t get financial help from the NHS to buy a hearing aid privately. But, if you choose to buy a hearing aid privately, you are still entitled to a NHS hearing aid.
Specific hearing equipment features to look out for when buying a hearing aid, are :
Directional Microphones – to improve speech understanding in noisy environments by using two microphones to separate unwanted sounds behind the wearer from the important speech sounds in front of the wearer.
Multiple Compression Channels – react quickly to increase the volume for crucial speech sounds, lower it for louder ambient noises, and protect the wearer from sudden loud sounds like slamming car doors.
Multiple Programs – also called “memories,” – let the wearer change the manner in which the hearing aid processes sound when moving from one environment to another, providing more control over various listening situations.
Noise Reduction – makes listening to speech more comfortable in difficult or noisy situations as well as reducing wind noise when outside. Noise reduction technology can vary and it is important to understand that having noise reduction in hearing aids does not mean background noise is eliminated.
Feedback Cancellation – virtually eliminates annoying whistling or squealing, enabling greater clarity of listening to speech.
The Royal National Institute for Deaf People (RNID), will in the future, produce the NHS hearing aid booklets to help you use your aid. It also produces many factsheets on hearing aids and hearing impaired equipment products and devices for deaf and hard of hearing people to help them be alerted at home.