What are your favorite apps for hearing loss or tools you use?

I have wanted to try the speech to text apps but this is my fear. Not being able to face the person speaking.

Reply to Julie, re speech-to-text apps: I hear well enough to handle most social exchanges, but meetings that last hours with all technical talk are another matter. When there are new words or concepts, I need to "read" the speaker. (Of course, I haven't been to any tech meetings since masking started, which would be a REAL challenge.) So, for me, the app wasn't really necessary in casual situations and just got terribly confusing when I really needed the help. In addition, I haven't found an app that doesn't fail miserably for tech terms. It's one thing to have TV captions scrambled, but losing half the words in one sentence is really difficult. I've been spared for well over a year because I realized that the scientific project I was involved in was headed nowhere...all decisions required consensus, which meant that nothing difficult could be included in crafting a statewide solution. Conservation is great, but it's far from enough to turn things around when all the rivers report zero streamflows at some point every summer. Unfortunately, this project will determine how water is managed within Oregon far into the future, totally ignoring the greatest problems. I'm working in a more direct way to find a solution for the lack of water every summer on the Oregon Coast: no snow pack in the Coast Range, every little town full of tourists who need water.

@joyces
I wonder if Otter would help with technical terminology. It was marketed for meetings and interviews and there may be a way to import any technical vocabulary that you use. I use the free version and find it the most accurate of the four apps I have loaded on my phone.

FL Mary

@joyces Thank you for the good work you're doing. Meetings are always difficult for people with hearing loss. It's very different when they are in person than when they are online. For in person meetings, you have a right to have communication access. You do have to request it in advance, according to the American's with Disabilities Act. (ADA) Sometimes it means the provision of technology like FM systems, Infrared systems or hearing loops. CART (computer assisted realtime transliteration) is also an accommodation. With CART, a person with court reporting/stenography skills provides the written transcript on a screen. It's basically real time captioning. Providers of CART are difficult to fine, but they are out there. If people would request CART more often, more providers would exist.

We all know that hearing loss is a disability. We know the ADA exists, but we don't use it. COMMUNICATION ACCESS is just as important as mobility access. Far too many people think that providing a sign language interpreter provides the access we need. That's far from true because less than 10% of people with hearing loss know or use American Sign Language (ASL).

We must know what is available and ask for it. We have a lot of educating to do.

reply to Julie: While I may have a right to communication access, for the most part it simply doesn't exist here on the Oregon coast. We have about one person per square mile in our county, little funding for anything, no public rooms or theaters with captioning available. I also have no cell reception at home, and my driveway's flooded for weeks every winter--but I have deer and elk and a heron and egret right outside my office window. Every day. Very hard to work when there's an elk standing not 10' from my desk! Deer often come and breathe on the glass, reminding me that they'd like me to come out and offer treats; several eat out of our hands. Not lots of traffic on our one-lane gravel road, but every day people stop and get out to take photos of the animals in our yard. We have no neighbors closer than a quarter mile. My husband calls the frequent problem of things getting done slowly "coast time." I gladly traded living on a lot in a big city for what I enjoy her, don't regret leaving some conveniences behind.

reply to Julie: While I may have a right to communication access, for the most part it simply doesn't exist here on the Oregon coast. We have about one person per square mile in our county, little funding for anything, no public rooms or theaters with captioning available. I also have no cell reception at home, and my driveway's flooded for weeks every winter--but I have deer and elk and a heron and egret right outside my office window. Every day. Very hard to work when there's an elk standing not 10' from my desk! Deer often come and breathe on the glass, reminding me that they'd like me to come out and offer treats; several eat out of our hands. Not lots of traffic on our one-lane gravel road, but every day people stop and get out to take photos of the animals in our yard. We have no neighbors closer than a quarter mile. My husband calls the frequent problem of things getting done slowly "coast time." I gladly traded living on a lot in a big city for what I enjoy her, don't regret leaving some conveniences behind.

Don't let fear prevent you from trying speech to text apps. I have trouble watching a screen while trying to listen too. However, in some settings it's very helpful. Keep in mind, that Speech to text is not always verbatim. It makes errors just like you see on captioned TV programs now and then. It can be very helpful in the right situations though.

@mickey5909
Hi,
It does take practice using speech to text apps and some apps are faster than others in recording. But you soon become a very fast speed reader and mostly you need just to scan the content to get the gist of what is being said. I have no problem looking back and forth from the screen to the person. You really don’t have your head down looking at the screen all the time. They are free to try and most people are patient. I have come across so many normal hearing people who are having their difficulties understanding through masks. Try them. I can’t imagine myself functioning independently in these masked times without using them.

FL Mary

Thanks! Do you have any suggestions for good ones? This is a long thread and I don’t have time to really peruse it to look for suggestions.