 23. My name is Ann Thomas. I'm the president of the Diablo Valley Chapter. Before we get started today, because this is a group conversation, we wanted to have a little bit of an idea about who's here today, what kind of technology that they have, and what kinds of things that they might be interested in. So we'd like to ask that you just physically raise your hand so that we get a general idea about what the answer might be to these questions. So we'd like you to raise your hand if you suspect you have a hearing loss. So in relationship to this, if you know you have a hearing loss, we don't want you to raise your hand here. This is just if you think you have a hearing loss, but you haven't found out that you haven't had your hearing tested. A lot of people hang out for a long time thinking, oh, gee, I'm not hearing as well as I thought I could before they go ahead and follow up and get their hearing tested. And the second question, which is the one most of us will answer, is that you know you have a hearing loss. So has everybody who knows they have a hearing loss raised their hand? Bob's asked to raise your hand because I know you have a hearing loss. And I know you know that. Okay. And do we have any people here today who may be here because they have a family member who has a hearing loss? Okay. So then almost everybody here knows they have a hearing loss, or they have a family member with a hearing loss. So that's very helpful if the conversation moves forward. We didn't know what the technology level of everybody would be. And this is a slide that was created for a presentation about over-the-counter hearing aids. But I also think it could be valuable in guiding our discussion. And I have it here. So I think I'm going to go ahead and present the slide. There are basically three different areas that people can have problems with in their hearing. One is their outer ear. The next area can be the middle ear. The outer ear is conductive hearing loss, the outer and the middle ear. Then we have the inner ear, which is the cochlea, which is most people who have age-related hearing loss. Because that's what is the predominant level of hearing loss. And Claudia, I see you have your hand raised. Do you have a question? So you have to unmute yourself. Sorry, no. I'm going to lower my hand. I forgot to do that. Okay, perfect. The inner ear. And then there's some people who have mixed hearing loss, which is inner and middle. And when you have that, you have frequently what's called otosclerosis, which these are tiny little bones in the middle ear. And what happens is they calcify. And so when they calcify, that means they get rigid. And those little bones when they move are what push the sound waves into the cochlea. So it's like they progress the sound forward with a push. And so when they calcify, that can't happen. And so sometimes people have sensorineuro hearing loss is compounded with otosclerosis. So they have a conductive hearing loss as well. We all know that hearing loss is a spectrum disorder. That means that one size doesn't fit all. So it can range from a mild hearing loss, which you can see here with the red line. And this slide was developed for an over the counter hearing aid presentation that I gave to the Rossmore fund in April. And so 70 deaths, these are frequencies. This is the volume. So 70 decibels is the border line between moderate and severe. And so severe, I think that profound starts at like 95 or something like that. So the types of hearing instruments that there are, you can have hearing aids, cochlear implants or bone conductive devices. And hearing aids and cochlear implants are things that you all may be familiar with. You might not be familiar with a bone conductive device. And that is for somebody who has a conductive hearing loss, which means that the sound isn't conducted through the middle ear to the inner ear. Frequently that's called by cost by autosclerosis or potentially a genetic disorder in your middle ear. There's some people here today who don't know me. So I'd like to let you know that I found out I was losing my hearing in my late 40s. And I had a progressive hearing loss. And today I'm very happy to let all of you know, I have two very, very successful cochlear implants that I got during the pandemic. So now we're going to open up our group discussion to all of you here to find out what you want to know and what you want to talk about today. So this meeting is for you. And for your experience of hearing other people's stories, other people's interests. So the first person, please, I'm opening the floor to you because this is your meeting. What would you like to talk about? Somebody has to raise their hand. There we go. Carl Brown, what would you like to talk about? Okay. I'm Carl Brown. I live in Rossmore. And I have some Cygnia hearing aids. My problem is not so much hearing sounds, but being able to distinguish parts of speech, I miss here words. And finding hearing aids that help correct this problem, I find extremely difficult. I got some high-end hearing aids there. Okay. I went to somebody who I'd worked with before. They wanted $3,000 to tune them. Are there any options available to me? I know I'm driving my wife absolutely crazy because I miss hear things. I'm missing words. I miss fragments of conversations. And hearing is largely a guessing game. So Carl, I would like to ask one question before other people comment. What level of hearing loss do you have? I would say reasonably mild. So after this meeting, I'm going to send you this diagram. And we use it as a teaching tool in all of our outreach events. And I'd like you to take your audiogram that you received and oh, excuse me. I'm assuming that you ask for your hearing test after every time you visit the audiologist or hearing health care provider and you have your hearing tested. And if you have not, please do that. So I'll send you this audiogram in a single form. And I want you to mark on this audiogram exactly where the X's and O's are on the one from your provider. And if you have a problem, you can contact me. And C, on the side here, see it says normal, mild, moderate, severe, and profound. So you can have an idea then of really where your hearing loss is. What you're describing doesn't sound like a normal situation that someone has with mild hearing loss. What you're saying is something that all of us experience, hearing loss is only measured in the area of speech. Doesn't include anything else. So when you have a hearing dysfunction, when something's happening with your hearing, it's affecting what you can understand in speech. I think generally, unless you have profound hearing loss, I think your hearing could be improved. Okay, so I'm going to quit talking and I see Carol Agott. Hi Carol, how are you? Nice to see you. Carol lives in Boston and we know each other from the HLA convention and from other communications. Do you have something to share with Carl? Yeah, Carl, I don't know whether you are familiar with oral rehabilitation, oral rehab, it's called. And there's somebody here who specializes in that and a lot of members of our chapter go to him. I have not, but it deals with word recognition. So whether you go on an ongoing basis and see him regularly or just go for an evaluation, he might be of some help to you if you can find somebody in your area who does oral rehab. I don't know, Anne, do you know about oral rehab in your area? We do not have any people who are really fostering it. So there's LACE online, there's several online oral rehabilitation programs, but other than that, we don't have anybody who we could refer someone to. But Carol, thanks for bringing that up. Because it's a very important component. Carl, I have another question to ask you. In your communication with your wife and hi, I see her hair on the side of the screen. Hi, welcome. How far away are you trying to communicate to her from? Sometimes just feet away. Okay. The reason I'm asking that is because if you have over a mile to moderate hearing loss, the effective range of hearing aids is only about six feet. And that really isn't very far. And nobody tells us that it's if you raise your arm and the person you're talking to raises their arm, that's about six feet. So generally, if you're outside of that range, it can make it difficult. So here I see you have your hand up. Yes. So I have a problem with with with discrimination. I had I have a conductive hearing loss, but I it's combined with the inner year loss. And I had a steeper debt to me very recently on my left ear. And my hearing aids, of course, had to be adjusted after that. And now with both hearing aids, and the state podectomy, I can hear very well. But my discrimination in my left ear, where I had the state podectomy is very poor. So I'd be really interested in oral rehab, because I really need help in discrimination. I cannot tell the difference between you know, the between consonants consonants are really hard for me to to distinguish. So here, have you asked your doctor about prescribing that you have oral rehabilitation with a specialist? Because my understanding is that if your physician recommends it, that Medicare will pay for it. No, I have not. But that is something I'm going to do very soon. Okay, who has Carl, you asked a question about reprogramming your hearing aids. So who have you been seeing? Well, I lost my hearing aids a number of years ago. And I went to get them replaced. And I was quoted $8,000. I found that through my Medicare supplemental, I could get the cost of those down to $5,000. But I had to go through their program. And the audiologists that they have are okay. But the one I have been going to was extremely good. And he closed his business. I've been to a couple of other audiologists and have not been particularly impressed. So Zoher goes, we have two audiologists that are members of our chapter. And when we met in person would always come to our meeting. And Zoher happened to choose he needed a new audiologist. And he went to Eric Breitling, who is in La Merinda in Lafayette. And Zoher, might you want to talk about your experience? Yeah, so he is very helpful. I had a hard time when I got my new hearing aids about two years ago. And I went to him many, many, many times to get them adjusted and fine tuned. And that's one thing I would just recommend for everybody is to have a hearing aid provider or audiologist who either whose offices are either very close to where you live or where you work. Because you really have to go to them many times for fine tuning and adjustments until you can hear reasonably well. So Carl, I'd like to share an experience that I personally had in and around hearing aid pricing. So in my late 40s, when I found out I needed hearing aids, and then I went to get them, like everybody else, I was shocked at the cost. You know, like, you know, jaw dropping shocked, right? And you don't know me, but there are lots of other people who know me. And I'm just a proverbially curious person. So I got the first estimate for the cost of hearing aids. And I thought, well, you know, almost everything in the world has more than one price. I wonder how much other people charge for the same thing. So I price check the same hearing aid in four different practices. And I found as much as 500 plus different in price per aid. And at that time, the aids that I was looking at were a mid range aid, could I have mild to moderate hearing loss? And the more progressive your hearing loss it gets, unfortunately, tends to be the aids get more expensive because you want more premium aids. But I'd also, because I've had that experience, that would have been $1,000 less for my hearing aids, then I think you should call around and ask. So you know that the aid that somebody is referring to, call three, four different practices and see what they charge for that aid. And where the difference comes in is that hearing aids are frequently bundled. And what that means is that there's the price that the aid actually costs. And then there's the price for services. So everybody may generally pay in the hearing aid providers may pay the same price for the instrument, but the price of variation between providers is by what they charge you for their services. Yeah, I did find, effectively, I went and you're right. I went to several different providers, the same hearing aid, buried by $3,000. Yeah. And I'm not even talking about getting it with your senior advantage. I'm just talking about if you didn't have insurance, because generally insurance still doesn't cover hearing instruments, hearing aids, but just if you didn't have insurance, if you compared them. Okay, so who else, who has the next question? Could, Zair, could you give me the name of your audiologist again? Yeah, do you know what? Email me after this. Or if Alan could, Sarah might put it in the chat. His name is Eric Breitling. And we're not, I'm not recommending him. I haven't used him before. Zoher Chiba has successfully used him and he can talk about his experience. And because of that, we can provide his name for you. So we're here just to provide education, not referral. Okay, so who's next question? Everybody came here because they have a question because it's a group discussion. Carol Aged in Boston. I'm Carol, you're mute. I'm not sure just what I can ask about it. Since everybody, nobody else has a question. I will bring up my bugaboo, which is Bluetooth. Actually, it's the interaction of Bluetooth and FM because I use Roger mics for a number of different things. I have different mics for different situations. And the limitations of Bluetooth are very frustrating because I never know what will go with what, what will link with what, but I understand that Roger mics are not Bluetooth. They're FM. So why when I turn off the Bluetooth that connects my hearing aids to my computer, does that affect whether I can then link my Roger mics? So I don't know if anybody else is is that much into the supplementary aids. I just by the way discovered this one only a week ago. Somebody in my group uses this captioner. And I found out and I found out from her that it's just a unlinked phone. It's a cell phone that costs only $150. And if you have an Android phone, you can use live transcribed to get transcriptions. But then of course, your phone is tied down to that and you can't use it for other things, which is a problem often. So the supplementary phone is helpful. And then I have an iPhone and I've an Apple is just not really what is this, the host is spotlighted. Oh, okay. Would you like to unmute your microphone to speak? I don't know. Do I want to unmute my microphone to speak? And Carol, you were originally talking and you didn't have your microphone turned on. So that was a message to you to turn your microphone on. You can ignore it now. So, you know, unfortunately, my question is really very situational because I find that well, first place, if you have a phone act and you use my phone act, are you finding it is very unreliable? And it sometimes shuts down the hearing aids that it sometimes I have to remove it and replace it. And just in general, how do you use my phone act? So do you have a solution to that? Okay, so Carol, I wrote down that you have three different solutions, three different questions. One is about using Roger devices and Bluetooth. One is about speech to text apps. And one is about using my phone act, which is using the microphone on my understanding on your cell phone to augment speech in general. Did I get your three questions correctly? Yeah, and I'm afraid they're sort of vague. No, I understand. Okay. So is there anybody else here who uses Roger? Jim, do you have a question? Yeah, Jim raised his hand. Oh, okay, Jim. So since you raised your hand, thank you. Do you want to talk about using Roger? Well, I have a cochlear implant. So I use the Roger on. I'm not sure that's the same device that Carol was talking about. This is one of them. Yeah, it looks pretty much like that. So I've had, I really like it. I use it a lot. But what I found is after connecting and disconnecting it from the little port that you use for television, there's a little device you hook to your television and the Roger on plugs right into it. I've essentially worn out the connector. And so now my Roger on doesn't doesn't connect easily to to the the cord that you stick in there. So that that's become a difficulty that I've had. But hooking it into your computer or whatever there's a little cord that they give you. That's connects with it and that works pretty well. But the all the connections are fragile. And by using it a lot connected in back forth, they wear out. And I'm on my second little cord. Roger will, I mean, Phonak will replace that, which was kind of interesting. I had lost it. And I asked for a replacement. I asked them to if they'd sell me a replacement connector cord. And they sent me a whole new system. And I took the cord out and had to send the rest of it back to them, which was I thought was kind of interesting. I'm not sure if I asked your question or not. Is this a cable to connect the Roger to the computer? Yes. Yes, it came it came with the kit. When you get your Roger on there's there's a number of different devices in there and in there is a little cord. Hold on. I can go treat it and show it to you. Hold on. You keep talking. I think I have one right here. Okay. Anyway, yeah, that that cord plugs into the Roger and then the end as a phone jack that plugs into your computer. And so by using that, you can I used to be I used to use Roger on for these meetings. But since I've had difficulty with that connector, I'm now using a neck loop, which doesn't work quite as well. But it's sufficient. So Carol, one end of it is a USB port. Yeah, the other end plugs into do you have Roger on or Roger in or Roger pen? Roger on. Oh, you said that earlier. Okay. So this is a USB-C. Yeah. See, and it plugs into the bottom of the Roger on, plugs into the bottom, and you could plug it into your computer. You know, I have another question. Do you have Bluetooth hearing aids? What kind of hearing instruments do you have? Right now, I am struggling because I sent my hearing aids back to Phonak. I had Lumidae. Now I'm back to using my Marvel. My Lumidae works with a computer automatically. I don't have to plug anything in. I just set the computer to Bluetooth. It is not, the computer is not connecting to my Marvel hearing aids. And you've reminded me of that cord, which I haven't been using because I've been using Lumidae. So now I'm going to try plugging it in so I can use it when I'm on Zoom. So Carol, what I'm hearing right now is that you have the most current hearing aid that has gone to the manufacturer for repair. And both, and you're using the hearing aid that you had before that, and both of those hearing instruments are Bluetooth capable, correct? Right. Okay. Except that they're not working the same way. Yeah, so I have a suggestion for you. It's my understanding that there are a limited number of Bluetooth devices that can actually be connected at one time. So I'm wondering if you have used, oh, Jim, I see that. I'm going to come back in a minute. To your, I'm wondering if you have some of those slots set up for the Lumini so the Marvel can't take that place. This is my problem there. Understanding the slots, I mean, I realize I can use only two at the same time. But why can I use it with my Lumidae and I cannot use it with the Marvel? Okay, so you have to unpair the Lumini and pair the Marvel to the app. How do you unpair something? Well, all right, on the computer. No, no, it's fine. So you have an iPhone, correct? Right. Okay. So you go to the Bluetooth connection. You read what devices are connected to Bluetooth on your phone. When you find the one that's Lumini at the moment, click on it. And when you click on it, another window opens up and one of the options is disconnect. The phone isn't involved in this. This is between the hearing aids of the computer. Okay, so on your computer, it can be the same thing. I realized after I said that, yes, there is a way to disconnect it from the computer. Yeah, so you're deleting. I have not found out whether there is a way to tell what your hearing aids are connected to. How many devices are on the hearing aids? For example, I walked out today and I got the blip blip blip blip when you get out of range. I have no idea what's in range. What can you do to see on the hearing aids? In other words, my computer has a list of connections. My iPhone has a list of connections. There's no list of what my hearing aids are connected to. Yeah, there are. So on your, what they're connected to is to the device. So when you look in the Bluetooth list on your phone, you're seeing what's connected there. When you look at the Bluetooth list on your computer, you're seeing what's connected there. Now, how many connections you can have are in the directions for your device? And I can help you with that later, figure that out, because different devices have different numbers. So you can be connected to multiple devices, but you can't use more than one device at a time. And how does that fit in with the Roger devices, which are not Bluetooth? No, they're connected through, let me see, how's the mic? So when you look at your app, when Roger is on and it's paired to your device, you should have a program for Roger. Do you have that? When the Roger is on, are you talking about the Roger on or? Yeah, sorry. It's hard, right? When you have, let's, I'll change it. When you have the Roger activated, yeah, if you open the app on your phone, you should see that you have a Roger on program. All right, I've got the, my Roger, Mike, and my Phonak are the two different apps. Which app are you talking about? So that's right. On mine, I have two different apps too. And on the Phonak app, it just gives you additional settings that you may choose to activate or not activate for the on. Most people, or a lot of people, the options in the Phonak app for the on are too complicated for them to really utilize. So if you use the app for the on in the, oh, you don't have a CI, right? No. You only have, you have hearing, both hearing aids, right? Right. Okay, so then you only have the Phonak app, correct? I only have a Phonak app only as opposed to what? Oh, see, I have two apps. I have the Cochlear, the advanced Bionics app, and I also have the Phonak app. So that's, I confused that, I'm sorry. Yeah, I mean, so in your Phonak app, the place that I could see the could be problematic is the Phonak app currently connected and set up for your, your Illuminati, or is it set up for your Marvel? Right, I don't have, I haven't done anything about connecting the app to the Marvel because it's only for a week, and I don't know what I would need it for. But what I would like it for is the computer. Like right now, my computer can be heard by anybody who walks by my door. The piece you need to understand here is, and it's for all of us, doesn't matter where we are. This is a wonderful piece that you're a question you're bringing up here. When you have an app on your phone, that app is paired for it to work. The app is paired to something. So you said that you had the Illuminati and it was working great. And so I'm making an assumption that you had it paired to the Phonak app. So when it's paired and connected to the Phonak app, that means it's giving you the programs for that hearing aid, those models of hearing aids. If you start wearing a previous version of those models of hearing aids, the app on your phone, more than likely, is not paired to them. So you have to delete the app to the Illuminati and then reconnect it to the Marvel. Does that make sense? Well, I do have books on my phone. I am able to link the book to the Marvel hearing aids. In other words, I'm now able to listen to the book, which is why I can't understand why I cannot listen to the computer. So is what you're saying that you can hear audio from your cell phone in your Marvel hearing aids? Right. Okay. So if you can hear the audio in your cell phone to your hearing aids, which are now currently the Marvels, that means that the Marvel is paired to the Bluetooth on your phone. Right. And if I go through the Bluetooth on the computer and I touch on Connect, which will connect me to Illuminati, it will not connect to the Marvel. Okay. So do you know how to pair with your Marvel? When I pair, oh, you mean open the battery door and close it? Yeah. Yes. Okay. So what happens when you do that with your computer? It won't connect. I do it and I lay it right down on the computer and it won't connect. And what kind of computer do you have? MacBook Pro. Okay. So after this meeting, let's connect and we'll see if we can get that to work. Great. Because I have MacBook Pro. I'm proficient in both Mac and Windows. So we can take care of that. But you're not alone here. This piece about what's paired to what isn't paired is very confusing. That's what I wish Phonak did a better job of putting out instructional materials. Well, so they do have videos. The piece that made things complicated for you is because, see, you're using extra complicated. You're using two different devices. Different devices. Right. And so sometimes what you have to do is you have to unpair another device, meaning you need to delete it so that it'll recognize the new one. Well, it depends on the device. I use table mics very often and they are gears. All I do is turn them on and they're connected always. Then I go to the Roger arm and it won't connect. So I'll talk about this with you afterwards and we'll see if we can find out what the problem is. Okay. I'm thinking because I have had this problem too that it is you've got a device. I'm wondering if you have your device. The device can't tell your on can't tell whether you're connecting to Lumini or to Marvel and it gets confused. So until you get your Lumini back, you could delete your Lumini and then you're at least finding out, okay, if the Lumini is not there, does it find the Marvel? Well, there I had to have the technician at the audiology office connect the on to the Marvel when I brought in the hearing aids to return. So he did connect them and yet the on is still not working with a Marvel. Yeah. So have you restarted your phone since you recently? I have not had a phone call since I put the marvels on. I just have my fingers crossed that I'm not without a phone for a week. Yeah. No, if you change stuff like that, you really need to restart your phone. Yeah. Well, I do that weekly because inocaption said that you have to restart it every week. I don't know if you ever heard that from in it. Do you use inocaption? No. And you haven't had problems with it. Nothing out of the ordinary. Okay, so we so we've talked about this problem of Roger, the difference between connecting hearing assistive technology to your phone to your computer and Jim Schroeder decided to work around that and Jim is connecting his to something different than what I'm connecting. So Jim, can you show can you show the cable that you're using? Okay. Yeah, I'm the cable that I have is a little different with the ear, a little different than the one you showed. And this one end is got the the USB-C connector like yours does. But the other end has a phone jack. So this connects into the the the phone connection in your computer. So you just plug that into your computer and then you use them on the Roger then will connect to your computer and I use that because for the very reason that you stated it's hard if you have a Bluetooth connection to say your phone to disconnect it from your phone and reconnect it to your computer is really kind of labor labor intensive because you actually have to forget you have to go into your phone and forget the connection on your phone before it will reconnect to your computer and then so then you've got to repair them each time and that's I don't like to have to do that. So I just have my my my CI connected to my phone and that stays connected all the time whether I'm using it or not. I mean obviously this connects when you're not using it but the the pairing is still there. So anyway I use this connector and it works pretty well. It's just that after a while this part see I can't see myself I heard this part here the phone jack it wears out and then it you've got to wiggle it to make it connect and so apparently I've looked around I can't find these connectors anywhere. The only place you can get them is from Phonak and they were replaced it but like I said they sent me a whole new kit and I took the connector out and sent the thing back to them they're perfectly fine with that why they can't just send you a new cable I don't I don't understand but they have their procedures and they're kind of weird that way. Anyway that's all I really had to say about that. Jim have you ever so you don't have so you have a USB-C that plugs into here have you ever tried to plug in the regular USB to your computer to see if you notice a difference between that and plugging it in the audio port? No I don't think I've ever tried to do that. So I have both I'm going to try that after we get off and I'll let people know if I notice anything and maybe Jim we can connect about that I think that's a I think that's really an interesting project. Okay okay so Carol they did that we talked about you mentioned speech to text apps. Um well I was just showing you this because I just discovered it a week ago and it's been fabulous this is a wonderful backup for meetings so if anyone is interested so people who are members of the data chapter are very familiar with speech to text apps because I was one of the people who was one of the first people with Ava and Ava is still my favorite speech to text app it is the most robust of all of the apps and the reason it is the most robust is it is the only one that I'm familiar with that you can actually have a conversation with different people and each person who's talking is identified in the app and how I'll explain that is I have Ava on my app on my phone Carol you have Ava on your phone we connect to an Ava conversation and you can do it today very easily with if you're in person you just lay the phones on top of each other and it has a QR code then within the conversation you have a profile I have a profile when you talk it shows up in one color just like the new enocaption feature and when I talk it shows up in something else so this was especially valuable during the pandemic when you had to have six feet apart from each other so the importance of the speech to text apps is the closer you are to the microphone the more accurate it is and I like to remind everybody the microphones are on the bottom of your phone and the tendency is to hold your phone like this so you're covering up the microphones so rotate the phone so the microphones are on the top and you can cock it out to the person who you want to speak with so that's my favorite of them it works on your computer it works as a floating screen on your phone now as well so it can be floating around there and any time you want it you just touch it okay I used it yesterday in a restaurant and I kept getting words from the adjacent table piece of their conversation would so you can plug a microphone a special microphone into your phone and hand that microphone at a restaurant to the person who you'd like to understand talking or if it were Ava they would just connect on their phone okay so the next person I think is Carl Brown did you have another question Carl first I want to make a comment on bluetooth if you if all of your devices are not the latest version or version five or better there is a limitation of seven devices and often each hearing aid will be a separate connection uh that just for your information would sort of confirms what you were saying about the limitation of bluetooth uh the what I'm wondering about is insurance for loss of hearing aids I lost one the other day went all over looking for it eventually what I did was turning the one I had off and using bluetooth to at least find that it was somewhere in the area I am so if it would pair show that it paired I knew I was somewhere close to it and as it turned out I still had trouble it was about a 30 foot circle and uh I talked to one of the security guards who had some nice young eyes and found it but I was really lucky it has brought up the concern of insurance for hearing loss aid loss of loss of hearing aids uh and other I've also found out that there are bluetooth apps that will actually show you the direction that the bluetooth signal is coming from does anybody know about the insurance for for hearing aid loss there are there are hearing instruments hearing aid insurance companies you can go ahead and google them a piece that you might want to do is for your insurance that you have for your house your car whatever ask if you can have a rider that's a good idea okay thank you uh Claudia hi good morning hi good to see you and great great conversation here yes using and interfacing with all of these different technologies is uh quite challenging but I just want to make a comment following up on what Jim was saying about having to pair and unpair um I'm using the bluetooth I'm not having that problem I'm using the bluetooth on the computer to understand this zoom call and it's going straight into my hearing aids I have my iPhone right next to me here and it's also on bluetooth uh connected to my hearing aid and I there's no problem it's not unpairing or disconnecting I don't know what would happen if the phone rings whether that would screw something up but so far I have it paired to my iPhone and to the computer at the same time so who knows maybe every person's setup and situation is different so unfortunately everybody's situation tends to be different because we have different instruments and I'm delighted that what you have going on right now is working for you without confusion and I believe that in your bluetooth connections if you have it connected to your phone that the a phone call always takes precedent now do you have your hearing aids connected to your phone audio as well as for phone calls um I'm not sure I understand that question um okay so when you're using the bluetooth to connect to your instrument and you get a phone call and you answer it and goes right to the middle of your head yeah that's that you have your hearing and I know you have a hearing aid hearing aid connected to the phone call capability of your smartphone yes you can also have your hearing aid connected to other audio on your cell phone so let's say you wanted to hear listen to music let's say you wanted to listen to an audio book any other audio a youtube video you wanted to hear the audio it's a setting within your phone to allow that to happen yes you have to turn that on I don't remember ever turning it on but if I listen to an audio book I guess it comes through bluetooth if I listen to music on spotify it comes on your phone on my phone oh perfect then it's on yeah then it's on that's wonderful bluetooth is the greatest invention that's been for me a huge game changer and I don't need a separate device to plug into the computer or anything like that um yeah Kathy Ross child hi let me myself okay um hold on I have been talking to two things I have my phone and my um okay now you can hear me I'm using my phone I'm sorry earlier my video was showing and I was walking from the car back to my place so you might have seen funny things um what Claudia was just saying um I I'm using my phone right now because it's going right to my ears I'm on zoom on my phone and I'm on zoom on my MacBook Pro is she is she on a mat is she on a computer right now a laptop because it looked like she didn't look like she was calling from her iPhone yeah Kathy the answer to your question is you can pay if you can pair your hearing aids to your phone you can pair your hearing aids to your computer and so you don't need to use the phone to listen to the audio well I usually don't I was in a rush but I usually use I usually can hear it from my computer but if I want to hear really well I have a streamer that goes in my sound hearing aid in my cochlear implant that I plug into the side of my plug in to my phone and to the side of my laptop now you're saying there's a way to directly pair well so you can rather than plugging into your phone you can plug it into your laptop that's what I do but it's using the resound app or the cochlear implant app on my iPhone to work can you say that again so Kathy because you have for everybody here so because she has the mini mic I happen to know that she has a cochlear america's implant so the way right okay so that's a cochlear america's implant and you have resound hearing aids correct okay and rather than directly connecting to your computer you have been directly connecting to your cell phone and listening to audio through the cell phone is that what you're saying yes with normally I don't call into the zoom meeting on my cell phone normally I just get it from my laptop today's unusual but um so are we hearing that today it didn't work I'm not sure what no no I was rushing back from somewhere normally I can actually hear the laptop without using anything it's loud enough but I wanted to hear extra clear today um but you're saying rather than use this for my laptop I could be pairing my hearing aids right to my mac well see I think you need the mini mic to do that yes right and so you would pair the mini mic you know what I'll look into that for you okay you know everything and you're amazing um well it's only because I was born with a question mark on my forehead and so you ask a question like right now and all of a sudden I realize well maybe and maybe um I don't know about that so then I go and look it up okay that's how the other question was with Ava I've been using otter otter because someone really recommended that in my um redwood city uh chapter that used to be in um the problem is I can't I need this cochlear implant when I go to places especially loud places I mean I need the streamer not cochlear implant I need the streamer wherever I go and hold it up to people to hear and someone said that's wrong I shouldn't be dependent on that so I have an appointment this week to get a new mapping to see if there's something wrong that I'm so dependent on this but I was using it with otter and I can't with otter which is like Ava you you could not use both at the same time if I use otter I can't use the streamer is that true with Ava do you think so I had a similar situation recently and I don't have the same devices that you have and I need to investigate that for myself and so at the same time I'll investigate it for you so I had the experience of the microphone my microphones on my implants got turned down when I was using Ava which is what you're talking about and I think there may be a way to turn that off and so I know all of them as well so that's definitely going to be one of my if it's not absolutely there one of my suggestions with them a way for us to be able to do that now this place is generally when I need to use a speech to text app it's in a place where I can't understand and so I'm opting to use speech to text rather than not understanding audio and I don't have that very often it's it's we live on certain lives you know we never know when we're going to understand and when we aren't but I will check into this part for you about that when you use the speech to text app the microphones for your instruments are turned off correct um also with with Ava with otter you get like only an hour free and then you have to buy time pay so much a month is Ava the same thing so when they came out otter offered this huge amount of time and actually it's quite amusing because what happened is they found it wasn't sustainable so otter has really revised the amount of um free uh speech to text you can have and Ava's you have more per month but that's limited to 40 minutes at a time for free so if you're in a conversation that 40 minutes expires you just restart it or you purchase the what is it $10 a month now or something like that for the pro plan so the reality is you know unless you're a government agency and you're getting money from the government which is what all of the telephone captioning apps do you have to make money to survive so they have to charge so Kathy was there anything else that you know thank you uh-huh Jim Schroeder I think you're next okay I have a a different question sort of a different subject so um if you want to switch gears or not you can choose not to answer this but my question is really related to ADA and uh self advocacy and it relates to I'm aware that you know the ADA uh titles different titles all government agencies and government meetings and things are are required and they have to have assisting listening systems for you to use but my question is what about other other groups who who is really required to have a assisted living listening system for example the the local PTA or um your uh different uh service groups like the Rotary Club or or somebody like that are any of those groups actually required to provide assisted uh listening systems so for those of you who don't know um I also sit on at the National HLA get in the hearing loop committee and I'm very knowledgeable about the ADA and we actually published this get in the hearing loop guide and handbook and in the back of the guide and I'm really proud of this right it it's the silver lining of my hearing loss I mean that I helped produce this and it's really very extensive so Jim in all in the back here and it's online on the HLA website we have everything that you could ever want to know about the ADA so here's all the titles here's everything else um in a nutshell so this is where you could look for the resources in a nutshell there are four major titles of the ADA employment state and city government local entities like hotels and everything like that and then a miscellaneous category the ADA in regards to hearing loss says that we need to have equal understanding as everybody else and that they are to provide auxiliary aids and services to accomplish that if they are using a public address system then they're required to provide an assistive listening system okay so if they're using a P oh and in 2010 they there are actually two parts of the ADA there's actually the law which is the ADA itself but most of the time people don't really refer to the ADA they refer to what's called the ADA standards and that's the interpretation of what the law actually does and the department the the access board is the one that revises that all the time and the last major revision was in 2010 and with that revision there was a change a major change in when they were required to provide an assistive listening system and it used to also include the number of seats used to include whether it was permanently installed that's not true any longer so any meeting that you go to that they're using a public address system they're required to have an assistive listening system now we all know that most places are not following that law and it's our job to ask for communication access all the time and if it's not about how will you hear on your best day and in the best situation it's about how will you hear under the worst circumstances because if you're thinking about your best day and it's not your best day and it's everything the worst thing that you can think of and you haven't asked for accommodations then you get there and it's too late to get them so Jim and the PTA they meet regularly correct I I assume so I just so you're not wanting to attend the PTA oh excuse me are you wanting to attend a PTA meeting uh no I I just kind of that just kind of pull out of the top of my head is an example of some some um is back when I had small children uh my sense was PTAs were were really just a group of people that are kind of throwing things together and they were making it up as they go along and so I would think that that would be a group that would be least capable of providing some sort of assistant listening system without a whole lot of guidance yeah so I I have no I'm not planning to attend the PTA so my experience is that most PTA meetings are held in schools yeah so you have to have someplace to hold it right or held in schools the and they're held in schools and schools already have PTAs I mean already have um public address system so they use the public address system in the meeting location in the school they're required to provide assistive listening systems so you need to ask right and we need to be really direct I have a disability the disability is hearing loss I need communication access to participate what do you what do you have start there and if it's generally could be a place like deer in the headlights the what's that right and it's over and over again we had an experience this year that gosh I think it was seven years ago we extensively advocated with the Lafayette Community Foundation for their yearly event um it's a senior aging event they weren't providing any accommodations to anybody um got them to provide captions they were providing captions every year after that the pandemic happened we didn't participate that one year and then I was on their committee for a while we didn't participate and we participated this year and they had the event with no captions over and over again keep doing the same thing does that answer that question yeah I was mostly and thanks for bringing it out for them to talk about one of your favorite sentence no thank you okay we're 11 24 we just have a few more minutes left in our meeting I'd like to thank everybody first of all for bringing wonderful questions and comments and having such great discussion and there are multiple formats that we can have to do this meeting other chapters do what's called hope and then hope everybody talks at the beginning and you can't make any comment and then the last half you can make comments about your experience or something that you know that may help somebody we were hoping to maybe be able to do kind of a mix between them um and if you liked this format we would we would really appreciate it if you would give us feedback if you didn't particularly like it that's okay too because we want our peer mentoring and support to be better we want it to be as good as it can be we have a couple of um announcements the first thing that we want everybody to know is that we have a youtube channel of all of our previous meetings that we've had if you have missed one if you would like to refresh yourself on something that we um that we um had a presentation about please visit our youtube channel also this was um the plug for the ada that jim so kindly asked the question about and my common saying is that communication access helps people with hearing loss the same way that ramps help people with mobility issues and if you're talking to other people they seem to understand that that concept which they don't generally understand what communication access is and the value of it where here you can tell by the icons everywhere we're always looking for committee members um zoe here chiba is the chair for our programs committee and the programs committee meets once a month to develop programs for the upcoming year and our year is ending in december and so we're looking for some new ideas and things for 2024 hard to imagine it's 2024 and i'm a died-in-the-wool activist and i'm always looking for anybody who may be interested in helping me advocate for new and better things in our community alan kutzer and i have had an experience this week where one of our chapter members fell and broke their hip had surgery ended up going to acute care for rehab and opened up a whole new door of how we need assistance how we don't need assistance we've spent a lot of time there to try and help this person um you'll be seeing some things come out of that list that we need to have when we don't really think about what happens if something happened to us you were in an accident your hearing instruments falls off gets lost how could you hear you're in the facility your hearing instruments keep falling off because you're laying down how do you communicate with the people it's been really eye-opening we'd be remiss if we didn't remind everybody that we are a membership organization and please join us you're free to um participate in our meetings because we're open to the public but we'd like it if you wanted to be a member you can do that on our website you see the link that says membership just click on that and it should look like this and we now i think even have a qr code you can just scan it our meetings are the first saturday of the month next month we are working to having a hybrid meeting again or in person and it's going to be a really special meeting and claudia you're going to love this because hopefully we're going to have you in may to inaugurate your new book that's coming out gail hannon is going to be giving us and i think i skipped her slide hang on a minute where is that ah here it is the upcoming events so gail hannon and um cherry e birds co-authored a book here and beyond live skillfully with hearing loss and the gail was supposed to come last year and she was ill in december and had to cancel and the december meeting is one that never works for sherry ebert so we're going to be fortunate to have gail and if you have never heard gail give a presentation you're in for a real treat so everybody please put that on your agenda and we're one minute away from the bewitching hour of we try to keep our meetings to 11 30 and we're one minute away and so if anybody this is a you have one minute to is there anything that somebody knows or something special that somebody wants to contribute to make sure that we're all aware of it when is gail's meeting so i uh what month was that december december which will be our next meeting and unless we made a mistake because alan and i have both made mistakes recently on on the date we believe it's december second thank you so i see that there were messages in the chat i'm going to quit sharing here did it was there any message was there anything that i missed was there any question that wasn't answered in the chat is everybody happy that we had this meeting today like this in this format so kathy i saw you say yes thanks okay well thanksgiving is coming up it's one of my favorite times of the year i reflect on all of the wonderful good things that happened in the year since last thanksgiving and one year i even had a gratitude tree and i had cards that everybody could write down what they were grateful for in the year before it was really a fun thing to do i wish you and your families a very happy and fruitful and full thanksgiving and i look forward we look forward to seeing all of you in december for gail hannon have a nice weekend and we'd like to thank our captioner today and the state of california with the rcc captions to for providing captions