Deaf/Hard of Hearing

She has almost no hearing at this point and has been slowly getting worse for decade at least.

She started hearing aids fairly early but would not wear them out of vanity.

Also she didn't wear them all the time, only when needing to hear.

The problem is that your brain's audio processing centers need to adjust to them since they way your ears have been hearing for decades has changed and those decades of training them gets less applicable to the reduced hearing or the altered hearing provided by hearing aids.

What has made her life dealing with people possible has been my old Google pixel phone ( with no service ) running the built in transcription app that works without a data connection to pretty accurately transcribe what is going on around her, her doctors ( which I take her to ) are always amazed by it since without it they need to shout and are never sure she is getting the correct information, this way they can see what it hears, and she is reading.

It will bleep out what it considers curse words and will vibrate when someone says her name ( obviously must be told what to listen for ) will also vibrate on doorbells and smoke alarms.

Works very well, can be used with a speaker phone for phone calls ( complicated by heavy accents though ).

Anyway hopefully you will never need that and that the aids will keep you for decades.

As already stated the latest AirPods have fda approved usage for hearing assistance or will soon with a software update.

May be fine for minor hearing loss, also not sure how it accommodates hearing loss at different frequencies since everyone has different weak frequencies but the right software could work that out with a pretty quick and easy hearing test at different ranges.

Also bear in mind that much of your hearing is software and not hardware, as your hearing changes you can train your brain to interpret the new signals from your "hardware" ( entire pathway of hearing from your eardrum to your auditory nerves ) using the "software" of your brain which does have a lot of ability to adapt to change if trained properly.

Look at the brainHQ app which uses what seems to be good research to train your brain specifically for things like consonants and other speech sounds. There is a cost annually so research it, the doctor behind it has written books on neuroplasticity and has applied that research to the approaches taken by the app.

I have no affiliation with any of these things, just stuff I have discovered over the last decade looking at a future of familial hearing loss and general aging. I'm also no expert on hearing or neurology but I did stay at a holiday inn express once so I attribute any information in have to that

Good luck ! Contact me if you want any more specifics and I'll dig things up in more detail.