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Is a great smartphone for deaf people the same as one for hard of hearing people? Maybe, maybe not. The Sidekicks on T-Mobile were inaccessible to a lot of hard of hearing people for a long time because they generated significant interference with hearing aids. I'm currently without a...

If your mom is going to use HD television services, the caption decoding actually needs to be done by the set top box, not by the HDTV itself. HDMI cables don't transmit closed caption data, and the FCC long ago required digital set top boxes to decode captions. (It seems to me that many of...

I wondered about that, too. That low price *may* only be good if you're using a plan at least as expensive as what you signed up with. Make sure you don't see any such restriction in the language and that you won't get stuck with a $35 or $36 activation charge if you can't get the change made...

Thanks for the clarification about how to get the text plan. One thing that's good about this plan for hard of hearing people is that voice minutes are 25 cents each versus the 40 cents that most other providers would charge, and incoming calls wouldn't necessarily be blocked. I'm hard of...

Are you sure about this? When I went into a Verizon Wireless store and asked about the Droid a couple of months ago, I was told there was no data plan available for it. I didn't mention this specific plan, though. I wish we could know ahead of time. Another reason for getting the Droid is...

I'd love a speech recognition app that could work with the speech of people who grew up with hearing loss. I can't use the Voice Control app on the iPhone because it's too fussy to recognize my speech, even though most people can understand me fine. I therefore find the iPhone frustrating to...

The Google Voice number can be used to receive SMS messages and will forward the message to the current cell phone and/or to an email address. This way, you have an online record of all SMS messages sent to the number, which is nice to have. Deaf people could use the Google Voice number to...

The new update for the iPhone 3GS allows all sound to be outputted as mono; this is an accommodation for people with hearing loss. Pretty cool! Unfortunately, I don't see it in the update for the 8 GB iPod Touch (it might be available in the newer ones).

One thing to remember is that you want the CC icon to be and stay red. If it's grey, then it's not showing captions.

I have a Panasonic DMR-485V (from Costco) with a built-in digital and analog TV tuner which will upconvert DVDs to 1080p. (Think of the DMR as "digital media recorder"...it can record to DVDs, videocassettes, SD cards, etc.) Because the device has a built-in digital TV tuner, it was required...

The Sling software came out with the ability to decode captions over a year ago. Thus it's not absolutely necessary to have captions decoded before the video is sent via the Sling hardware. It *is* necessary to have closed caption data within the television program, however, and because HDMI...

I do. The speech recognition for voice messages varies a lot depending on how clearly the person speaks, but it's generally still helpful. It also has a record of the caller's phone number, though not the name. The Google Voice service can also be used in place of the cell phone's regular...

FYI, if you can get your captions decoded before the Tivo records it, then you can transfer the open-captioned programs to your PC. I do this with a coupon-eligible digital-to-analog converter box (like the Insignia's) which can decode the digital captions. I have lots of open-captioned...

Jay, see AT&T's TAP plan for the iPhone: Text Accessibility Plan for iPhone - Wireless from AT&T If you look at the actual TAP pdf file, every voice minute would cost 40 cents (not per use, which is a huge difference). You might want to consider using voice minutes only in an emergency...

All my life, my better ear has been my right ear, with which I use a hearing aid. I have a CI for my left ear, but I process sounds much, much better with my right ear. (I'm glad I didn't implant my right ear, though, because I value the residual hearing in that ear too much to risk losing...

I'm uncomfortable there wasn't any research cited in the above article. I couldn't find anything online to indicate that Spitzer had actually evaluated whether the side of the ear makes a difference in CI outcomes; that doesn't mean that she didn't do it, but I couldn't find it. Check out...

Wow, that is really disappointing. If you belong to any organizations that advocate for people with hearing loss, let them know that. Have you put DirecTV on notice that you are not receiving captions from the on-demand movies? It's possible that they have trouble providing the advanced...

Please provide information about your own DTVs and captioning Since you've got four HDTVs, how about letting us know how each of those TVs do with respect to decoding captions on the component video inputs? If they all do, let us know the approximate year you purchased them and what the...

The standard for HDMI cables did not include one for passing through caption data, so caption data is not passed through by HDMI cables. Even if there happened to be a new standard developed (which is not in process), the TVs would also need to be designed differently to decode captions on the...

I've been enjoying Hulu.com quite a bit. I have *too* much to watch nowadays! There are 42 episodes in my queue there, so I have them arranged so that the one with the earliest expiration date shows up first. "Lie to Me," "Dollhouse," "ER," "24," "Friday Night Lights," "In Plain Sight" and...