During a comprehensive audiologic evaluation, professionals are evaluating the severity of a patient’s hearing loss as well as their ability to understand speech in quiet and in noise. Even appropriately fit hearing aids may not be enough for a patient based on their word recognition scores, patient report, or lifestyle needs. This specific group of patients is likely to find increased benefit with speech clarity through the use of accessories. Some common hearing aid accessories include TV streamers and remote microphones.

TV streamers take the audio from the television and wirelessly transfer it to your hearing aids, which are programmed for your hearing loss. First, your audiologist must pair the device with your hearing aids. Once this has been completed you are able to plug the TV streaming device into a power source and your television. Once paired, you are able to stream sound from the TV directly into your hearing aids without having the distance. This helps aid in better speech clarity while watching TV.

A remote microphone is a small microphone that wirelessly connects to a pair of hearing aids to help provide speech clarity, especially in background noise. For one-on-one conversations, the person that you are listening to can clip the microphone onto their shirt and the microphone takes their voice directly into your hearing aids while blocking out a significant amount of background noise.