ALDs for persons with hearing loss can help by either increasing sounds for a person who is hard of hearing or using another means to communicate sounds to a person who is deaf.  Other means include printed words, vibrations or flashing lights (signaling).

Amplification Devices - There are a wide variety of devices to assist persons to hear.  Some are small devices, such as "in the ear" hearing aids and others are larger such as assistive listening systems.  Amplification systems for radio or TV can help people who can't hear regular systems or must turn them up to the maximum sound to hear them.  Some systems connect a headset directly to a radio or TV, some can work through an existing loud speaker system and transmit sounds to a headset.  Other systems are personal systems which use a microphone worn by one individual and an individual receiver worn by the person who is hard of hearing.

Telephone Devices - Handset amplifiers for telephones allow a person with a hearing loss to increase the volume of the sound coming over the telephone handset.  Teletypewriters (TTY), telecommunication devices for the deaf (TDD) and text telephones (TT) all refer to a device that has a typewriter keyboard and a visual display.

Printed Words - One common use of printed words to convey the message is in the use of closed captioning on TV, movies or videos.  Another use of the printed word is through computer assisted note taking.  In this system, a stenographer types on a stenographic machine what is being spoken and it is then sent to a computer and projected on a screen.