iPhone tips for someone with cochlear implants

Cochlear Implants
1

I got the following request for help from a senior I assist from time to time with questions re his iPhone and iPad. He wears a cochlear implant and has great difficulty hearing, especially when using his iPhone.

Hi Bob -
About a month ago my wife fell and hit her head. 15 days in hospitals; now home with 24 care.

Needless to say, I have been on the cell phone constantly. Hard for me to understand some people.

The Phone App “Clear captions” was recommended – it would type out the conversation on my cell screen.

Heard of it? Any suggestions?

I checked out the Clear Captions app and it does not look good: the developer hasn’t touched it in two years.

Wearing hearing aids myself, I belong to https://forum.hearingtracker.com and plan to post his problem there and see what recommendations I might get but in the meantime, knowing there are many seniors in this group, thought I would ask here too.

Any suggestions for this fellow to explore?

2

It would be helpful if we knew what brand and model CI they have. Are they bilateral or bimodal?

The iPhone model might help too.
Thanks

3

InnoCaption does a great job captioning phone calls. You can choose a human captioner or automatic computer generated captions.

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4

Thank you so much for that. I did a preliminary check and that looks like a great app. I will pass it along to him.

I have suggested to him, BTW, that he join Hearingtracker.com and avail himself of the wonderful resources here.

5

Here is his reply:

I have 2 Advanced Bionics- Nadia CI M90. My question is about transcription to written words. Part of the problem is fasttalkerslikethis and people who talk while they are thinking ( um let’s see no not that — etc )
Paul
Basic question is - has anyone tried “clear captions “?

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6

These are Bluetooth. Has he paired them to his phone?

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7

I will ask and let you know. I am fairly certain he has.

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8

I use NALscribe when I need captions, which is not often and it’s free.

If he has a recent model iPhone you have the live listen feature he could use. It acts as a microphone and direct streams conversation to your ears. To activate this you triple click the home button. This brings up a pop up screen, right at the very bottom of this screen you will find live listen. Just activate that icon, put your phone down on (eg table) between the two of you and talk away.

9

Forgive me if I am missing something…but I don’t think this will help him. His problems involvfe dealing with medical and insurance info during calls on his iPhone.
If I am missing something, please let me know and thanks for posting.

10

I am not familiar with clear captions or any other app that spells out verbal communication.

Since getting cochlear implants I don’t have any problem talking to people on the phone using Bluetooth streaming.

Your friend has Bluetooth processors. Is he using them to stream phone calls?

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