Introduction

There are a variety of personal hearing instruments, and hearing assistance technologies, and other technologies available to choose from. Decisions regarding the best options for you should be determined with your audiologist and any other people who support your communication access. There are five parts to this section.

• The personal hearing instrument section describes hearing aids, cochlear implants and implantable devices including their advantages and limitations.

• The hearing assistance technologies section describes a variety of devices that can assist your hearing and understanding in situations that might be noisy or have poor acoustics. In addition to detailing these technologies, the FM Selection Wizard will help determine the best options for you based on your personal hearing technology. Some people will purchase a personal hearing instrument package that includes their own FM system. Again, you should explore these options with your audiologist, deaf education teacher, parents or other support persons to determine the best ones for you.

• Connectivity options describe how to connect your personal hearing instrument with cell phones, IPods, videophones, computers, and other audio-visual equipment.

• Other technologies that are commonly used by persons who are deaf and hard of hearing are described in this section. These include captioning, videophones, alerting devices.

• Finally, the best part is hearing from your peers about how they use these devices and how they help. These testimonials can be found at the links provided.