Jabra has always set trends for great design and cutting-edge consumer technology with its telephone headsets and earpieces, and now it is aiming its marketing guns directly at hard-of-hearing consumers with its announcement of the new Jabra 650 telecoil-compatible corded headset. Though it’s designed for all consumers, not just hearing-aid users, Jabra makes a big point in its news release and promotional materials about its aim to be hard-of-hearing friendly. The headset’s circuitry works with a hearing aid’s telecoil, enabling the aid to transmit a clean and clear signal amplified exactly the way hard-of-hearing user needs to get it. The product also features a specially designed foam earpiece to accommodate a behind-the-ear hearing aid. In addition to some other ease-of-use features in the product, the Jabra website has a nice compatibility guide to quickly determine if the headset works with your phone. It’s no coincidence Jabra is leading other manufacturers in making their products hard-of-hearing friendly. Its corporate parent, GN Store Nord also owns GN ReSound, one of the world’s leading hearing-aid designers and manufacturers. It’s a great example of the synergy you’d like to see more often between separate subsidiaries of conglomerates, and I’m hoping we can look forward to integration of more of GN ReSound’s hearing-aid technology into other new slick consumer electronic products from Jabra.
Telecoils in hearing aids are a godsend to people frustrated trying to communicate with standard telephones and telephone headsets. That’s because they pluck the pure dignal directly from the phone line, process it, and transmit it through the hearing-aid speaker at exactly the amplification the user needs. Bypassing the telephone’s speaker entirely eliminates re-amplification that distorts the signal, enabling the listener to hear clearly. Often the telecoils make the difference between being able to use the phone at all, or not. Unfortunately, the telecommunications industry has been slow to make all its products compatible with hearing-aid telecoils, in spite of the urgent prompting by advocacy groups and regulatory agencies like the U.S. Federal Communications Commission. (See my recent post about the U.S. cellular phone industry scrambling to meet deadlines to make their handsets hearing-aid compatible.) So when a leading manufacturer of high-tech earpieces and headsets goes out of its way to make some of its products very friendly hard-of-hearing consumers, it’s something to cheer about.