It can be quite tough dealing with the realisation that someone you know is beginning to show the inevitable signs of aging. There will be someone in your life be it a family member or a friend who starts to struggle with every day life simply because of their age.

In my case it was my mother. You expect people to get somewhat deaf as they get older and at first you just accept the situation. You just speak up and speak that little bit more slowly.

However it became a real problem when she stopped hearing her phone ringing, not all the time but often. We have a regular time when I ring and so she’d be sitting there waiting for my call but would fail to hear the phone ring. I’d ring again and still get no reply and would have to wait for her to phone me to ask me why I hadn’t phoned. Then I’d point out that I had called her.

We tried turning up the volume on her phone to the maximum but that didn’t help much. She still kept missing calls.

So I started to look round for phones for the hard of hearing that would help the situation. Of course I needed one that had a very louder ringer which they all seem to have, which is good.

The buttons on the phone had to be large as well. My mother has poor eyesight so needs all the help she can get to stop her pushing the wrong number though, of course, her usual numbers went on speed dial.

As she could hear quite well once she had picked up the phone I didn’t go for one of the high amplification range. I just chose a medium amplified phone which she could turn on if she was having a bad hearing day.

All in all she’s very happy with her new hard of hearing phone as it looks like a normal phone and she’s able to use it without much fuss. And at her age that’s exactly what you want. And everyone else is happy because she now picks up the phone when they ring.