This week the New York Times brings a promising update on the increasing adoption of the telecoil, a technology that promises to make life much easier for those with hearing impairments.  A hearing aid or cochlear implant that includes a telecoil can directly pick up the audio from a sound system, whether for a theater or a school or even a subway booth clerk’s microphone.  The signal is beamed to the telecoil via an audio induction loop of wire permanently installed in the floor; when the listener’s hearing device is trained on this signal, it eliminates the extraneous background noise and reverberation that can make intelligible listening a challenge even with a modern hearing aid.  The listener has effectively “plugged in” directly into the source—and without the social stigma that can hinder adoption of more obtrusive external listening devices.

The concept has been around for decades and is widely adopted in parts of Europe—there is a telecoil transmitter in the back seat of every London taxi—but it is only recently gaining a foothold in the US.  With the greying of the population and the fact that more than 30% of people over the age of 65 are affected by hearing loss, the ability to make clean audio directly accessible to the ear holds “clear” potential!