Hi everyone, I haven't been out much because of health concerns and have therefore been quite isolated. I'm trying to find an easy to use video chat platform so that I can better communicate with my son and two grandchildren. Anyone have any recommendations or know how someone like myself who requires a hearing aid can possibly connect more personally to their family? Also, has anyone else experienced technological trouble and/or connecting with their family past a phone call?
Welcome to the forum, @Jordan Atwell ! We have several people here with hearing issues, so they can probably give you some good recommendations. We use FaceTime for video chatting, but there is also Skype, and I think that Zoom is for video calls. If you have earbuds, that seems to help people who have trouble hearing regular conversation over the phone, or on a video chat. I know someone who is very hard of hearing, and when he uses his headphones or earbuds, he not only hears better but he speaks a lot more clearly, so other people can understand him better. Otherwise he kind of slurs his words sometimes, maybe because he can’t hear what he sounds like. I also use Facebook to interact with my family, and we have several private family instant message groups going where we just all share things with each other, and read the messages as we have time. This saves having to coordinate every one being there at the same time.
My family uses Zoom and we all talk a blue streak once a week. Wife and I are in Virginia, one daughter in N.C., one in Ga., and a granddaughter at Stanford (working on a doctorate). On Zoom, we can see each other, talk about our lives, and have a "family time". Its great. By the way I wear Widex Unique hearing aids and they are also good ones.
Yes this isolation is terribly sad much of the time. But I do get to keep in contact with kids and grandkids and other family through calls and FB! Thank goodness for the internet to keep my mind busy too.
For a couple of people, Facetime seems to work pretty well for me. My wife sometimes schedules online get-togethers with a group of her cousins, and they have used both Zoom and Go-to-Meeting. They had trouble with one of them, and liked the other better, but I'm not sure which. I think they started with Go-to-Meeting, but found that Zoom worked better for them. Both of these are made for large groups but, of course, they can handle larger groups too. Both of those can also accommodate people who aren't doing the video call, but are connected by phone only.