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Cell Phones for Senior Citizens and Hearing Aids: M rating and T rating

When you’re looking for a cell phone for a senior one of the factors that you must look at is the compatibility with hearing aids. A lot of cell phones actually will create interference with hearing aids which can create:
•   Feedback
•   Humming noises
•   Static
•   Hearing in general
Every major cell provider is actually required to offer a hearing aid compatible cell and those phones are marked plainly as such. You can also look at how well a cell phone would work with a hearing aid by checking what is called the M rating and T rating.
Microphone Rating vs. Telecoil Rating for Cell Phones
Almost all of the current hearing aid options come with two different modes:
•   Acoustic coupling or microphone mode
•   Telecoil coupling or inductive mode
The acoustic coupling is what picks up every sound, even ambient noises, the telecoil coupling is specifically designed to only pick up the electric signals that are sent through a phone. Some of the listening implements will only use the telecoil coupling and disable the acoustic coupling automatically when placed near a phone in order to prevent feedback. The smaller of the aids don’t have a telecoil coupling built in so they will only use the acoustic coupling.
Due to the fact that there are two different modes for the listening devices the phone manufacturers have the requirement of disclosing the ratings for both of them. These are referred to as the M and T ratings. M ratings are for the acoustic and the T ratings are for the telecoil.
The following scale ranges form 1-4. 1 is the worst and 4 are the best. It breaks down as follows:
•   M1 T1 – Poor
•   M2 T2 – Fair
•   M3 T3 – Good
•   M4 T4 – Excellent
There is no direct correlation with the M and T ratings so if one has a high M rating but a low T rating it doesn’t mean anything. You do want to be looking of a rating of a 3 or a 4 for either of the M or T though.
Hearing Aid Ratings
There are also differences with hearing aids. They have something that is known as RF or radio frequency interference resistance. What this is for is the prevention of your hearing aid from picking up any radio signal unintentionally. The bad part about this though is that it can hamper the compatibility of cell phones.
Due to this fact it’s key that you’re factoring this in along with the M and T rating of the hearing aid as well. There won’t be listings of this information for every phone but you can consult your audiologist in order to get help finding this information.
FCC Mandates
There have been laws enacted by the FCC which define the compatibility of hearing aids and set forth rules on how the hearing aid compatible handsets are carried by national carriers in regards to how many handsets those carriers have to carry.
In order to be considered a hearing aid compatible phone it must have a rating of 3 or higher for the M and T. in addition to that the retailer has to let you test out the handset before you purchase it. Also the cell phone companies have to provide information on their websites.
Other Factors
In addition to the M and T ratings there are some other considerations that you should make to ensure that the cell you’re looking to purchase is good with a hearing aid.
One example would be that the CDMA cell phone carriers are going to work better with a hearing aid than a GSM cell. Also a flip phone or a phone with a clamshell design is good as they don’t pick up as much interference as other types of phones will.
One other bit of advice is placing the phone just a little behind the ear instead of directly on the ear could actually help in getting a better signal.

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Tags: cell phones for seniors

This entry was posted on Friday, April 9th, 2010 at 7:34 pm by Bryan Bradshaw and is filed under cell phones for seniors. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.