Strategic Thinking

I spend a lot of time and energy thinking about the situation I'm going to be in and what strategies and hearing assistive technology would be appropriate. Let's say I'm going out to dinner with friends. I have a variety of technologies I might consider bringing.

I own two cell phones. The primary phone I use for making calls, with apps for controlling my hearing devices and other hearing accessibility features, and another phone for the speech-to-text app I prefer to use. The apps need different operating systems, which is why I have two phones. I also have a remote microphone that works well but has some usability issues that trip me up but it's much more effective than the remote microphone built into my primary phone in certain situations.

Each of these devices has different ways of charging them so if I'm bringing a battery backup in case a device runs out of power I need all the additional cables and accessories. I also need enough time to charge everything up before heading out of the house to an event. All this takes time, planning, and organization so I have some confidence in my ability to fully participate. As I said, going out isn't as easy as it used to be.