atcomsystems.ca/forum Forums General General Telephone & Systems Information Hearing impaired options

I have a manufacturing facility that has an employee who is legally deaf. They are looking for a way for him to get notification of phone calls. We are thinking about a strobe tied to his extension and a volume control handset. I was just wondering what some of you have done for an application like this. Some kind of cool voice to text pager maybe. (I made that up, don't think anything like that exists.)

Contact the Job Accommodation Network (JAN) if you have questions. They give free advice on this.

There's a lot of variation with legally deaf people. He may just need a phone that works with a T-coil (if he uses hearing aids, this will work the best, assuming his hearing aids have a T-coil and he knows how to turn it on). Old handsets seem to work better than new ones (the old, heavy, Bell sets seem to work the best!), but just about anything should work. One caution: a hearing aid with a T-coil can pick up an older phone's magnetic signal from across the room if the hearing aid user is in the right location relative to the angle of the phone. Interesting eavesdropping possibilities...(anything made in the last 15 years won't send that strong of a signal). The benefit of the T-coil is that it will work as a magnetic induction pickup on the phone, disabling the microphone while in use, so he won't have to deal with background noise.

Will he use a TTY? If so, he'll probably need an analog line (some TTYs will plug into a headset port though on a digital/IP phone). I've done TTYs via VoIP using g.711u - the big thing is to avoid anything that compresses. Same goes for voicemail - a TTY user will have a different set of settings on the voicemail server.

If he just needs *notification* of phone calls he received, but won't be participating, then a cheap caller ID box with a blinking light is probably fine. If he needs a phone, an analog phone with a neon light wired in with the ringer may work (if your ring voltage is high enough). Of course they make strobes, LED flashers, etc, for this purpose. It's probably cheaper to buy one that is designed for a factory rather than a disability accommodation.

If he uses sign to communicate, there are options for that - but I don't know much about those.

One more option - depending on the employee's role in the company - may be to provide him an analog line and a CapTel telephone. https://www.captel.com/

A final option is to forward the call to a cell phone, if he successfully uses one.

If strapped with digital sets, tie an audio-controlled relay (like Sandman's MON40 or similar Viking product) to the speaker leads on the base.

Use the relay to complete a circuit for horn, strobe or whatever makes sense. I've had great experience with the Viking SL-1 strobe for sites that needed highly visable, non-audible notification.

It's a good option, however be aware that it will void the warrenty of the keyset...if there is one.