Hearing Aids and Hearing Loops
Hearing loops, or induction loops as they are often called, can be a real benefit to people who wear hearing aids. You'll find hearing loops installed in many public places and you can even install them in your own home. But do you know if your hearing aid is compatible with loop systems?
To work with a hearing loop a hearing aid must have an inbuilt induction coil to receive the magnetic signals sent via an amplifier through the loop. These induction coils are often referred to as telecoils or T-coils. Most but not all hearing aids now have an induction coil inside them. So how can you tell?
An easy way to know if you can use your hearing aid with these systems is by looking to see if your aid has a switch marked with 'M' and 'T'. Sometimes hearing aids also have a 'MT' setting as well. 'M' is the setting you'd normally have it set to but to make use of an induction loop the hearing aid needs to be set to 'T' so that you are tuned into the loop and can filter out the background noise.
For those with the extra 'MT' setting, this allows the listener to hear both the normal noises around them and to listen into the loop at the same time.
If you have a 'completely in the canal' or 'in the canal' style of hearing aid then you are unlikely to have a telecoil built in simply because these types of hearing aids are just too small to fit a coil in, although this will probably change in a few years as T-coils get smaller.
If your hearing aid isn't compatible and you'd like to make use of hearing loop systems you'll need to use a loop listener instead which usually come in the form of headphones or earpieces.
If you're buying a new hearing aid it's always worth checking that it has a T-coil fitted to make sure you can take advantage of this useful technology.