by Neil Bauman, Ph.D.
If you have trouble hearing on the phone, there are two basic technologies that can help you. One is to amplify speech so it is loud enough for you to hear it. The other is to convert the speech to text so you can read it. And if you want the best of both worlds, you’d want a phone that could both amplify speech and caption it at the same time.
The good news is that there are such phones. I have two of them on my desk as I write this.
The first company to provide amplified, captioned phones was CapTel. I have had a CapTel phone since they began their first trials a few years ago. Today, CapTel’s state of the art phone is the CapTel 840i, which uses a regular phone line to transmit speech and a high-speed Internet connection to send the captions to the phone’s screen.
My other phone is Sorenson’s CaptionCall phone. Although both of these phones work about the same, the sleek CaptionCall phone impressed me at first sight.
Yes, there are things that could be improved, but overall this is a really nice amplified, captioned phone for hard of hearing people.
The competition between these two companies is a good thing for us as hard of hearing users as each company tries to outdo each other in innovation, features, quality and price.
Requirements for Getting a CaptionCall Phone
It order to qualify for a CaptionCall phone, you need to meet the following:
- You must be hard of hearing yourself, or someone in your household must have a hearing loss. There is no set decibel level of hearing loss required to get a captioned phone—just that you have difficulty hearing/understanding on the phone because of your hearing loss.
- You must have a signed form from a qualified health care professional certifying that you need a captioned phone because of your hearing loss.
- You must live in the United States.
- As with any other home phone, you need a landline phone connection.
- You need a power plug near the phone. (Most amplified and captioned phones are powered by house current.)
- Unlike other phones, this phone needs a high-speed Internet connection. The connection can be a DSL line, it can be a high-speed cable connection as long as you have a standard Ethernet connection into which you can plug this phone, or it can use a WiFi connection if you have a wireless router.
How to Get the CaptionCall Phone
Now here’s some wonderful news! You can currently get this phone for free, rather than the minimum $75.00 fee the FCC wants you to pay.
Here’s how to get your free phone. Go to the CaptionCall website at http://www.CaptionCall.com. Near the top right corner of your screen, click on the green “Request Phone” box. Fill in the form. In the “Promo Code” box at the end of this form put in the code “HS-1283”. When you are finished filling in the form, click “Submit”.
Next, click here to download the form you need to have signed by a health care professional. Print out this form and take it to one of the following qualified health care professionals. Note: qualified health care professionals permitted to sign this form include audiologists, hearing instrument specialists (hearing aid dispensers), ENT doctors (otolaryngologists), family physicians, GPs (general practitioners, specialists in gerontology, pediatrics and internal medicine, physician’s assistants (PA) and nurse practitioners (NP). Once you have the form filled out, FAX it to CaptionCall at 1-888-778-5838. (Note: if you do not submit this properly-signed form, you can still get a CaptionCall phone. It’s just that you will have to pay $75.00 for it.)
If you would rather phone in your order, simply call the toll–free CaptionCall customer support number at 877–557–2227.
Once CaptionCall receives both your “Request Into” and your “Professional Certification Form”, then you will be approved for a CaptionCall phone. In due time (and this may be a few days or longer depending on where you live and how busy the installers are in your area) a CaptionCall installer will contact you to arrange to come out and install your phone for you. This will not cost you a penny. The CaptionCall installer will show you how to use your phone and explain its many features.
If you want/need a second captioned phone, you can get a second CaptionCall phone, but you’ll have to pay $199.00 for it.
Who Pays for the Captioned Calls?
You’ve heard the expression, “There is no such thing as a free lunch” so you may be wondering how companies such as Sorenson and CapTel can offer free captioning services. The reason captioning is free to hard of hearing (and deaf) people is because it is funded by a monthly charge on everyone’s existing landline phone bill and mandated by the Federal Government. You can see it itemized on your landline phone bill as “Telecommunications Relay Service”. According to the government website, “This charge helps to pay for the relay center which transmits and translates calls for hearing-impaired and speech-impaired people.” (So everyone with a landline phone has been funding this service all along, whether they realized it or not.) Therefore, if it will help you, go ahead and use it. That’s what it is there for.
Features and Cautions
A cool thing about the CaptionCall phone is that it is the first phone of which I am aware that actually has Wi-Fi built in. (Since I originally wrote this, the new CapTel 840i also has Wi-Fi built in.) Thus, if you have a wireless router, the CaptionCall (and CapTel) phones can connect wirelessly to your router. That way you can use it anywhere in your home without having to have a nearby Ethernet connection.
Note: the CaptionCall phone’s built in wireless antenna does not have the extended range that many routers and laptop computers have. This means that if you locate the CaptionCall phone at some distance from your router (perhaps your router is in the basement) you may have problems getting a good connection. In such cases you will need to use a direct-wired Ethernet connection. However, as long as you are reasonably close to your wireless router, (CaptionCall suggests within 30 feet as a rule of thumb) this phone works wonderfully well in wireless mode. You can tell how strong the wireless signal is by the number of bars shown on the upper right corner of the screen. Four bars indicates you have a strong signal.
When you answer the CaptionCall phone, the captioning is off, but you can press the captions “On” button and within a few seconds, the captions will appear. They will stay on until you either press the captions “Off” button or hang up.
If you have the captioning on and realize that you can hear the person fine, press the captions “Off” button to turn off the captions (and save the fund some money since all captioned calls are billed to the fund at the rate of $1.76 per minute). By the same token, if you have the captions turned off and begin to have trouble understanding the person again, just press the captions “On” button and in about 5 to 10 seconds, your call will begin to be captioned again. In other words, you can turn captioning on or off on the fly. You do not have to wait until the call is completed to change captioning modes.
The CaptionCall phone is easy to use and works just like a regular phone. There are no special numbers to dial or special numbers those calling you need to dial. You just pick up the receiver, dial the number like you normally would, and within a few seconds anything the other person says will appear on the screen of your CaptionCall phone.
The CaptionCall phone has a 7 inch screen. It comes with three text sizes and three contrast settings. Combined with its exceptionally smooth-scrolling text that makes text ever so easy to read. Furthermore, the wonderful screen resolution—800 x 480 pixels—gives beautiful, clear captions. You do not need to strain to read the captions, nor do they look pixilated.
Note: the accuracy of the captions ranges from near perfect to almost useless. If the person to whom you are talking speaks reasonably slowly and clearly, the resulting captions are wonderful. However, if the person speaks fast, doesn’t pause, doesn’t articulate his words clearly or has a strong accent, the captions may be pretty much useless. If this happens, you need to ask the person to repeat what they said slowly and clearly. The quality of the captions should improve.
Another cool feature that CaptionCall built into this phone is how you can customize the phones frequency response to your specific hearing loss. To set it for your kind of loss, just press the “Settings” button, then choose “Amplification”. Now you have 5 choices for your kind of loss. Choose “None” if you have a “flat” curve as shown on your audiogram. If you have the rare reverse slope hearing loss, choose “Boost low frequencies”. If you have a “cookie-bit loss” choose “Boost mid frequencies”. If you have the very common “ski slope loss” then choose “Boost high frequencies”.
Now here’s a really cool feature—if you want to set the phone to exactly match your audiogram, you can choose “Custom”, then you move the green dots on the phone’s audiogram up or down by frequency to match the degree of hearing loss shown on your audiogram. (You just “push” them with your finger on the touch-sensitive screen.)
Another thing that impressed me about the CaptionCall phone is its clarity of sound. At high volumes, other phones I have used process speech so much that the speech sounds clipped and unnatural. Not so with the CaptionCall phone. Furthermore, there is no feedback like can happen with some high-powered phones.
The CaptionCall phone provides 40 dB of gain. This is plenty of volume if your hearing loss ranges down to moderately-severe or so. However, if you have a severe or profound loss and you choose not to use hearing aids when using the phone (which is what I do), you may find this gain is not enough for you. What I do is add an external amplifier between the phone base and handset for an additional 45 dB of gain. My favorite amplifier for this application is Serene Innovations UA-50. (I use it with a binaural Plantronics headset with boom microphone for handsfree operation.)
The CaptionCall phone has an 1/8 inch audio jack on the left side. Normally, an 1/8” (3.5 mm) jack would indicate you could plug in a neck loop or headphones or earbuds. However, CaptionCall goofed and wired this jack, not to fit the above, but to fit loopsets (neckloop and microphone combinations) and headsets (earphone and microphone combinations). Since these devices typically use a 3/32” (2.5 mm) plug, they don’t work either.
However, all is not lost. CaptionCall will furnish an adapter at no charge, or you can get one at Radio Shack, (# 274-0397). Then you will be able to use a loopset such as the Clear Sounds CLA7v2, but not a regular passive neckloop.
All in all, I am very pleased with the new CaptionCall phone. It is now my favorite phone. Try it. Maybe it will become your favorite phone too.
(Last Updated May, 2015)
Does the captioncall have a answering machine? How can I manipulate it to have one if you have a solution to this issue of getting phone calls when people leave messages? Thank you.
The CaptionCall Phone does not come with a built in answering machine. However, if you have voicemail or a stand alone answering machine, there is a process to set up the CapitonCall Phone to caption those.
Hi C.W.
No, the CaptionCall phone doesn’t have a built in answering machine, but it can caption your answering machine calls. There is a “button” (an envelope icon) that has two responses–caption voice mail, and caption answering machine.
I haven’t used the answering machine option, but I’ve used the voice mail option to caption my voice mail so I can “hear” them.
Neil
I just got this phone today. It doesn’t have an answering machine but if you have an answering machine nearby, it can convet the speech to text. the pohne does have a a voicemail feature and will convert your voicemail messages- I tried it!
Hi, I just received my CaptionCall phone and have a concern. I need to use a set of stereo type headphones as I have an Cochlear implant that needs microphone input on on ear and a hearing aid with telecoil on the other ear. I am trying to come up with a method to connect this type of headset with Mic (like the one used with a PC) to the jack on the side this phone. I have spoken with CaptionCall and got not help at all. In researching the internet I found “Headset Buddy Adapter: PC Headset to Phone Adapter PC35-PH25 – Use Computer Headset with Home/Cell Phones – Convert Dual 3.5mm to 2.5mm”, would you be able to tell me if this would work with this phone if I use the 2.5 to 3.5 adapter included with the phone? I know they designed it for the Clear Sounds CLA7-V2 Amplified Power Loopset but this will not serve my purpose. Any advice or ideas you could give me would really be appreciated.
Sincerely, Max Hartman
Can the Captioncall telephone be used in a business setting? I currently am looking for work and companies are reluctant to hire me once they find I have severe hearing loss and trouble understanding on the phone. Thank you!
Hi Heather:
It depends. If the company uses their own internal phone exchange(digital), then no. However, if they will run a standard analog phone line to your desk, then yes, it will work just like it works at home.
Regards
Neil
I was just wondering. I don’t have a landline and when I called our local phone company, they said it would be around $18 just for basic, but if I want long distance that it would be 15 cents/min. Would I still be charged the same fee if using the capcall or are the calls free with the cap call hooked up to the landline? I tried to explain this to the phone company, but they weren’t familiar with how cap call works. I have a lot of family and friends from out of state and don’t need high phone bills from my local phone company.
Hi Maia:
Long distance calls inside the USA are free using the CaptionCall phone.
Regards
Neil
Hi Maia, Charges from the phone company are not affected by this phone. Whatever the phone company will charge for long distance, i.e.,15 cents/min is what you will pay. Also there is no additional charges with this phone.
I work from home and am looking for a desktop phone with Speakerphone and/or headse and caption capabilities. Does either CapTel or Sorenson provide such a system. I do have an existing 2nd landline connection and high speed internet avaialable as well as a wireless router.
Thank you.
Hi Doug:
The CaptionCall phone doesn’t have speakerphone capabilities–but if your hearing is so bad that you need a captioned phone, you’d likely not hear a speakerphone. I know I can’t.
The CaptionCall phone has a headset jack–but you need a special adapter as they used the wrong kind of plug for headsets.
I use a headset amplifier and headset that will work with any phone. It plugs into the handset jack and the handset and headset plugs into the amplifier box. That way with the push of a button you can use either the handset or the headset. The headset I use is a binaural one with a boom mic so my hands are free.
You can see/purchase it at http://www.hearinglosshelp.com/products.htm#ua50. I love mine. I use it with my CaptionCall phone so I have both the volume I need, binaural capability and the captions.
Regards
Neil
What is voice message? Does this need to set up with phone company?
My problem is mom has phone w/ answering machine in her room which I can not understand, so it is useless and off. My caption phone is on my desk always show miss calls. Voice message would be big help.
Hi Amy:
Voice mail is mail left in your “mailbox” with the phone company, as opposed to being recorded on your answering machine. You need to subscribe to the voice mail option with your phone company. Then, you need to set it up. The nice thing about voice mail is that if you can’t understand it, you can hit the captioning button on your CaptionCall phone and it will be captioned for you.
Regards
Neil
What is the answer For Cell Phone Only Users.
With out using a New # and/or getting a land line.
Land lines are not avable where I want to live 5 months per year
The CapitonCall phone is not available to use on a cell phone. However there is an iPad app avaialble at this time. You can download it and use it anywhere you have internet connection.
Hi! My question, I have phone service with my cable company (Time Warner) IIs this considered a land line?
The phone will work with a voip line. However, your voip system would need to provide a standard phone jack to plug into to get analog dial tone.
Re question from Maria to you dated January 8, 2013. …..”Would I still be charged the same fee if using the cap call or are the calls free with the cap call hooked up to the landline?” …
Your reply to Maria dated January 13, 2013 “Long distance calls inside the USA are free using the CaptionCall phone” appears to be incorrect.
I just called CaptiomCall and they told me that long distance calls are NOT free.
Hi Sybil:
I better clarify this as the rules have changed. It USED TO BE that long distance calls were free via captioned phones, but that was changed because it gave hard of hearing people an unfair advantage over hearing people. The key here is “equal access” so the federal government stopped that “perk” in order to equalize things.
As a result, you incur whatever long distance rates your telephone service provider contract stipulates. You just don’t have to pay more for captioning. The captioning as such is free.
So for example, I have nationwide coverage so I don’t have to pay extra for any long distance calls. But if I had a different plan that only gave me free long distance calls in my state, then whenever I would phone out of state (whether using a captioned phone or not), I’d incur the long distance fees stipulated in my plan.
So that’s the way it stands now.
Cordially,
Neil
Can you adjust how many rings before the voicemail picks up? Can you turn off the voicemail/answering machine. We are an elderly couple and rarely can get to the phone before the answering machine picks up.
You can, but you need to contact your Telephone service provider who supplies your voicemail service to do that process.
Our Caption Call phone is getting bad in voice and translater nor being able to hear what was said on incoming calls.Also the out going voice and incoming voice calls are distorted
Un able to get a replacement !
You can contact Customer Support at anytime at: 877-577-2227 or email at support@captioncall.com
They are more than happy to assist you with any problems or questions you may be having with your CapitonCall phone.
is there a way that you can transfer a call to another line in an office
Hi Holly:
The answer is no, you can’t transfer calls via your CaptionCall phone. Sorry.
Cordially,
Neil
I have Home Phone Connect with Verizon No hardlinebut Internet connection. HPC has telephone plugs which ordinary phones work on. Will this work for me~
Hi Richard:
I think it will work, but I’ve never tried it. You plug the phone into the phone jack and it also needs an Internet connection–either wireless or Ethernet. The fact that the phone jack is not connected to a landline shouldn’t matter as it acts as if it was a landline connection as far as the phone is concerned.
Cordially,
Neil
Is the CapTel’s accuracy any better than CaptionCall’s? My mom has the latter and I have to repeat most sentences 2-3 times for her to hear. I speak slowly and clearly, she has the volume all the way up, and this is her second or third one. I just don’t see the quality with them so am searching for a replacement.
Hi Allen:
Since they both use more or less the same technology, the accuracy of both is more or less the same. Some people think CapTel is more accurate and others swear by CaptionCall. I use both and can’t really tell much difference. So much of accuracy depends on the voice characteristics of the person speaking. For example, sometimes I get phone calls that everything is captioned almost perfectly and the odd call is so poor that all I get is dot, dot, dot, then “speaker unclear”, then dot, dot, dot, “speaker unclear”. That is decidedly not very edifying. Most calls range somewhere in between.
If a person has no accent, articulates clearly and speaks relatively slowly, then the captioning is excellent (but if that happens I am usually able to understand the call and don’t need the captions). However, too many people speak quickly, slur their words and have accents–and thus the accuracy drops.
If she needs more volume (like I do) I attach an external amplifier in series with the phone to really boost the volume. This works for me–but often because of less than perfect speech from the person phoning, all I hear is louder gibberish. That is why I NEED the captions to be accurate. Here is a link to the amplifier/headset I use. http://hearinglosshelp.com/shop/ua-50-phone-handsetheadset-amplifier/
Cordially,
Neil
Please advise: My aelectronic guru tells me my Physical CaptionCall phone is “fried” and he can’t hook it back up (it has not workedc for a couple of months now. If twas originally hooked up by Certified Caption Call Representative a couple of years ago. I then had a computer crash and a new system put in. Sinc e then I have not figured out how to hook up my CC phone. I miss it incredibly, my cell phone doesn’t keep the sound up enuf during a call. I do not have a land line, my guru says I don’t need one for CC. Please asdvise. Love it when
it works…alls from Australia are totally clear!
Hi Donna:
You have me confused. CaptionCall phones are landline phones so if you don’t have a landline, you can’t hook it up. However, if all the problem is is that your phone is fried, then ask CaptionCall for a new one. Tell them the one you have is broken and won’t work.
There are caption Apps for cell phones. You might want to try that.
Cordially,
Neil
What are the dimensions of the CaptionCall instrument?
Hi Rosemarie:
When it is set up the CapTel 2400 phone is 12″ wide, 8″ high and 8″ front to back. Other models are somewhat smaller and differently shaped.
Cordially,
Neil