How to Hear Phone Calls
When You're Hard of Hearing

Ask anyone with hearing loss which situation they dread most and a surprising number will skip the noisy restaurant and go straight to the telephone. It makes sense once you think about what a call actually is. The sound is compressed into a narrow band, the speaker is a small hole next to your ear, and every visual clue you normally use without noticing is gone. There is no face to read, no gesture, no chance to see the word on somebody's lips. Worse, calls are where the consequential information lives: the appointment time, the dosage, the account number, the price, the yes or the no.

The good news is that phone calls are one of the best-supported problems in the whole field, and a lot of the help is free. Most people simply do not know it exists.

1. Start with free captioned calling, because it exists and it is funded

In the United States there is a federal program that captions your phone calls at no cost to you. It goes by the name Internet Protocol Captioned Telephone Service, usually shortened to IP CTS. You talk normally with your own voice, listen to whatever hearing you have, and read captions of the other person's side of the call at the same time, either on a special phone or in an app.

Two details matter. First, it genuinely costs the user nothing, because it is paid for through a Federal Communications Commission program rather than by you. Second, there is no age limit and no specific severity of hearing loss written into the rules. What is required is that you register with a provider and certify that you need captions to use the phone effectively. Several providers offer this, some as a captioned phone for the house and some as an app on a mobile.

If you help an older parent with their phone, this is usually the single highest-value thing you can set up for them, and it pairs naturally with the other tools in our guide to apps for hard of hearing seniors.

2. Turn on real-time text, the modern replacement for TTY

Real-time text, or RTT, is text that sends as you type it, character by character, over an ordinary voice call. It is not messaging. Because nothing waits for a send button, a conversation moves at close to the speed of talking, and you can type while the other person is still going.

The FCC adopted rules moving the country from old TTY equipment to real-time text, which means no separate machine is needed. It is already in the phone in your pocket. On an iPhone you will find it under Settings, then Accessibility, then RTT/TTY. On Android it sits under Settings, then Accessibility, then Hearing enhancements, then Real Time Text.

RTT is particularly worth switching on before you need it, because the call where you most want text instead of speech is often an emergency call, and that is not the moment to be hunting through a settings menu.

3. Fix the physical side of the call

Some of the biggest wins are boring and take one minute.

• Take the call somewhere quiet. Background noise costs you far more on a phone than in person, because you have no visual channel to compensate with.
• Use a wired or paired connection rather than the handset speaker at your ear. If you wear hearing aids, streaming a call directly to them is usually clearer than any amount of volume.
• Turn the volume up before the call, not during it. Fumbling with a side button while somebody is mid-sentence loses you the sentence.
• Ask for slower, not louder. Louder distorts, and shouted speech is genuinely harder to follow. Slower does not distort anything.

4. Say something at the start of the call

The single most effective sentence is spoken in the first ten seconds: "I am hard of hearing, so please speak a little slower and spell out any names and numbers." It costs nothing, it sets the terms while both of you are still patient, and almost everyone complies instantly.

Then read things back. Repeat the time, the amount, the address, the dosage, out loud, and let the other person confirm it. This is the same habit that works so well at the doctor's office, and on a phone call it is even more valuable, because there is nothing else to catch the error.

For anything important, ask for it in writing afterwards. A confirmation text or email turns a call you half heard into a fact you can check.

5. When the call has no captions of its own

Here is the gap. Captioned calling covers your regular calls once you are registered. Video meetings have captions built into the software, which we walk through in our guide to live captions for video calls and meetings. But plenty of calls fall between the two: a call on somebody else's phone, a speakerphone call in the car with a family member, a work call on a handset that is not yours, a call you did not expect to be hard.

For those, the fallback is simple. Put the call on speakerphone, set it down in a quiet room, and let a big text app on a second device caption what comes out of the speaker. RoomTalk shows what it hears as large, high-contrast text that holds the last line until somebody speaks again, so a phone number or a date sits on screen long enough to actually read rather than scrolling away while you are still looking at it.

Be realistic about the conditions. A speakerphone plus a room is a harder listening job than a direct captioned line, so it works best with a strong connection, a quiet room, and one person talking at a time. Treat it as the tool for the calls nothing else covers, not as a replacement for captioned calling you are entitled to for free.

6. Decide which calls should not be calls

This is the part nobody tells you, and it is often the biggest relief. A large share of the calls that cause the most stress do not need to be calls at all. Appointment bookings, prescription refills, delivery questions, bank queries and utility problems can nearly all be done by app, web chat, or email, where the whole exchange is already text.

Choosing text on purpose is not avoidance. It is picking the channel that carries the information most reliably for you. Save the spoken calls for the people and the moments where hearing a voice is the point.

What none of this fixes

Being straight about the limits is what makes the rest trustworthy. Every captioning system on the market, human-assisted or automatic, runs slightly behind the speaker, so there is a lag you have to get used to. Unusual surnames, medication names, street names and account numbers get mangled by every speech engine there is, which is exactly why reading numbers back matters. Automated phone menus remain miserable for everyone. Two people talking over each other defeats all of it. And a captions app cannot improve a genuinely bad connection, because it is listening to the same poor audio you are.

None of that is a reason to skip the tools. It is a reason to stack them: captioned calling as the default, RTT for the calls where typing beats talking, a quiet room and a slower speaker as the habit, and a hard of hearing app on the table for whatever is left over.

If the call is in another language

One distinction worth drawing. If the caller is speaking English and you cannot make it out, captions are the right tool, because they show what was actually said. If the caller is speaking Spanish, captions in Spanish will not help you. That is a translation problem, and an offline Spanish translator that shows big English text is the thing built for it. Different tools, and it is worth knowing which problem you are actually having before you go looking for an app.

The short version

Register for free captioned calling first, because it is funded, it is meant for you, and most people have never been told it exists. Switch RTT on in your phone settings before the day you need it. Say one sentence at the start of every call and read the important numbers back. Move the calls that do not need to be calls into text on purpose. And for everything that slips through the cracks, put the call on speaker and read it in big captions instead of guessing. Phone calls will never be your easiest listening, but they stop being the thing you put off all week.

One last note for the businesses on the other end of these calls. Plenty of the small businesses we work alongside started using Ai for small business so that a customer who cannot manage a phone call can still get an answer by chat or text at any hour. If you have ever given up on a company because the only way in was a phone menu, you already know why that matters.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is there a free way to get captions on my phone calls?

Yes. In the United States, Internet Protocol Captioned Telephone Service, usually shortened to IP CTS, is funded through a Federal Communications Commission program and is provided at no cost to eligible users. You speak with your own voice, listen to whatever you can, and read captions of what the other person is saying at the same time. There is no age limit and no set severity of hearing loss required, but you do have to register with a provider and certify that you need captions to use the phone effectively.

What is RTT calling and how do I turn it on?

RTT stands for real-time text. It sends what you type instantly, character by character, over a normal voice call, so a conversation feels closer to talking than to messaging. The Federal Communications Commission adopted rules moving the country from older TTY equipment to RTT, and no separate device is needed. On an iPhone it is under Settings, then Accessibility, then RTT/TTY. On Android it is under Settings, then Accessibility, then Hearing enhancements, then Real Time Text.

Can a captions app read a phone call out loud on speakerphone?

It can caption one, which is a useful fallback when the call has no captioning of its own. Put the call on speakerphone, set the handset down in a quiet room, and open a big text captions app on a second device so it can hear the caller and show the words in large type. Accuracy depends on a clean signal, so it works best on a landline or a strong connection, in a quiet room, with one person speaking at a time.

What should I ask the other person to do on a call?

Say at the start that you are hard of hearing and ask them to speak a little slower rather than louder, since volume distorts speech while pace does not. Ask for names, numbers, dates and dosages to be spelled or repeated, and read them back to confirm. Ask for a text or an email summary of anything important. Most people adjust immediately when told what helps, and asking at the start is far easier than asking three times mid-call.