This is the third part of my wishlist to audiologists and accousticians, hearing aid manufacturers, and the health care system. If you like to add something, share your experiences, or provide more information, I encourage you to submit a comment.

The compatibility between hearing aids and peripheral hardware and consumer  electronics like phones and mp3 players is often very bad. My bluetooth adapter often fails to pick up calls, so the first thing I do when someone calls is asking “Do you hear me? Wait, I don’t hear you, I’ll call you back.” And seriously, especially in a work environment, that is quite embarrassing and annoying.

Also, signal quality is often bad, especially with mobile and bluetooth-compatible phones of particular vendors. I cannot freely choose to buy a phone, I always have to borrow the same model from a friend first and check if it works. It often doesn’t, which restricts my freedom of choice significantly. If I have choice at all. My guess is, that there is not much testing going on to make a piece of peripheral hardware as compatible as possible to the consumer electronics market.

See also the next point on my wishlist: 24/7 Service and Availability of Replacement Devices. Or the previous one: Compatibility between vendors for hearing aids and peripheral hardware.