[TopInvestor]

For anybody interested the following equipment works the best: 1) Oticon hearing aids + TV streaming device connected to iMac via audio interface. It streams the audio from the computer to the hearing aids . 2) Teams + captioning. In order the person needing to see the captioning to see it he has to initiate the meeting and sharing the link. The link never expires and could be saved in Notes from all members of the group. The members of the group needs to share the meeting time via other means for example email , text message. Compared to Zoom, Google meetups Team has superior video, audio and captioning capabilities. There are desktop and iOS versions of Teams. No way to use Otter reliably with hearing aid device because it requires Chrome browser and needs physical sound from the speakers to work. Internal networking the sound is not working. 3) Phone calls - CaptionCall. It is free service paid by the FEDeral government. You sign up and receive dedicated phone number which you enter in settings for call forwarding. When you are calling or somebody is calling you CaptionCall is intercepting the call and forwards it for machine learning+ person transcriber. This is the best combination. 4) Messaging across devices -WhastApp. No video or audio captioning in iOS so - using only messaging. Used for announcing Teams meeting.

All other solutions do not do anything to accommodate-WebEx, BlueJeans, etc.

Microsoft is having the best accommodation service - there is dedicated web site with free 24/7 support for people needing accommodation. One Teams account is just $5/month and the support is responding within several hours.

[qkeast]

I love how many different approaches there are for setting things up!

One quick note about Otter: I’m using LoopBack to create virtual audio devices that let me feed the audio as an input source as well as play it through an output channel. That might work with the hearing aids.

(I use somewhat outdated Phonak Naida V SP’s – looking forward to the next gen that have better Bluetooth support.)

[TopInvestor]

With Otter it is complicated. It iMac needs the sound to be split but Safari is not allowing it. So they recommend Chrome and changing it’s settings. Then setting up aggregate device. But it is not working. The only way it is working is if the sound is also coming out from the speakers and the microphone is picking it up. Too complicated, there is a feedback and no streaming to the hearing aids. So Zoom + Otter is out of the picture. Teams has the captioning and the best quality. What happens is a lot of companies are demanding in using only Zoom. This is a misters why they just don’t use the link of the Teams invite. If they don’t have it installed it is working from the browser too.