IRVING, Texas-Nokia Mobile Phones announced the Telecoil-a hearing-aid compatible accessory designed to provide improved communications for the hearing impaired.
The new product works with Nokia 5100 or 6100 digital wireless phones and offers digital communications solutions to more than 2 million T-coil hearing-aid users in North America, said Nokia.
Inductive technology has been used for years in public areas such as auditoriums and concert halls to facilitate communications for the hard of hearing. Nokia has incorporated the technology into a personal accessory. Nokia’s accessory is a mobile inductive loopset that connects to a digital phone and works with hearing aids that contain a T-coil or T-switch.
Worn around the neck, the loopset accessory attaches to the bottom of the phone. The T-coil shuts the microphone of the hearing aid off, so it becomes a receiver of the magnetic energy emitted by the loopset, said Nokia. The T-coil then is able to convert those impulses to sounds, eliminating background noise and improving the signal-to-noise ratio.
The Nokia LPS-1 loopset is powered by three hearing-aid batteries and comes prepackaged with six zinc air batteries.
The Nokia LPS-1 Loopset was created by Nokia design engineer Mikko Haho, who has been hard of hearing since birth. In the past, when attempting to use a digital wireless handset, hearing-impaired users experienced interference from the high-frequency electromagnetic signal emitted by digital phones, said Nokia.
