Apps for the hearing impaired

People with hearing loss or hearing impairment face various problems in everyday life. Communication and consuming multimedia content in particular become a special challenge, which in turn can quickly lead to frustration for those affected.

Fortunately, there are now many technical aids for the hearing impaired, including various modern apps designed to improve social interaction and participation in social life.

What are apps for the hearing impaired? 

Apps for the hearing impaired are digital applications that have been specially developed to make everyday life and communication easier for people with hearing impairments.

There are now numerous different apps for the hearing impaired, which in turn have been designed for very different purposes and therefore offer a variety of functions and tools.

This includes, for example, the ability to convert spoken language into text. This text-to-speech technology enables people with hearing loss to read along with conversations in real time, which helps them to understand better and actively participate in conversations. Other apps provide subtitles for videos and films to improve watching TV with hearing loss.

Another useful function is the amplification of noises and sounds in the environment. With the help of microphones and special algorithms, these apps can record and amplify ambient sounds and transmit them to the person in question, for example via headphones or in conjunction with a hearing aid. This enables people who are hard of hearing to hear important warning signals, doorbells or other acoustic signals more clearly.

Other apps for the hearing impaired are designed to improve phone calls. They use functions such as text messaging, live transcription or video telephony.

In the following, we would like to give you a small selection of these apps for the hearing impaired.

What apps are available for the hearing impaired? 

Volume and hearing amplifier apps:

  • Max Volume Booster: The MAX Volume Booster app boosts the volume of your phone or tablet above the system settings. This can be particularly useful for videos and movies, audio books, music and games.
  • Sound Amplifier: With the Sound Amplifier app, it is possible to filter and amplify sounds using a smartphone and headphones. This is particularly useful for conversations with ambient noise.
  • Hear Boost: The Hear Boost: Recording Ear Aid app is a hearing aid with hearing and recording functions and microphone amplification. It is used to record sounds from a distance or distant conversations and thus understand them better.

Transcription apps: 

  • AVA: Transcription: Based on AI, the AVA app provides subtitles in real time on your smartphone. This helps hard of hearing and deaf people to follow conversations, lectures and other language contributions in many areas of life.
  • Otter: The Otter app also uses AI to transcribe your conversations, presentations, interviews etc. in real time. They can also be recorded and summarized if desired.
  • Rogervoice: Rogervoice is an app for transcribing telephone conversations in real time. This means that the app provides instant live transcripts of what your conversation partner is saying. The app also offers features such as visual voicemail transcriptions and interfaces for easy reading.
  • Google Live Transcribe: The market giant Google also offers an app for live transcription, which is designed to enable hearing impaired and deaf people to better follow everyday conversations by transcribing them in real time on their smartphone or tablet.

Alarm and emergency apps:

  • TapSOS: The TapSOS app allows users to contact emergency services without having to speak or listen on the phone. To do this, you simply create a profile with information and, if necessary, a medical profile, which is transmitted in an emergency, just like the GPS data for locating the person in distress.
  • Attention BeAware: This app is a modern all-round communication tool for deaf and hard of hearing people. In addition to a transcription function that converts speech into text form, the BeAware app offers a special alarm function that detects loud noises and notifies the user with vibrations, LED flashes and messages on the smartphone, as well as other helpful functions.

Sign language apps:

  • Sign language for the deaf: Have you ever considered learning sign language? The Deaf Sign Language app will help you - using individual words or whole sentences.
  • StorySign: StorySign is an app specially developed for children who are deaf or hard of hearing. It translates children's books into sign language. This supports deaf children in learning to read.

Hearing training apps:

  • Hearing fitness: You can train your hearing with the hearing fitness app. With various exercises, for example for listening comprehension, directional hearing, pattern recognition and more. Suitable for people with and without hearing aids.

These apps are just a small selection to give you an overview of the various options. It is important to note that these apps do not replace hearing aids or assistive listening devices. If you suffer from hearing problems or hearing loss, you should therefore always speak to a doctor first and discuss further treatment options.

where can i find apps for the hard of hearing? 

The various apps for the hard of hearing and deaf can be found in the well-known app stores of Google, Apple and Co.

There you can find out everything about the different functions, required operating systems, data protection and costs of the respective app.