TV speech is presented at faster rate than daily conversation speech; many researches show that understanding become worse with increasing in the speed of speech delivery. Problem might still persist even with hearing aids fitting.

• Background noise is another factor contribute to difficulties in understanding. It could the music or sound effects of the TV program itself, and ambient noise or other sounds in the listener’s surroundings.
• Features/adjustments of hearing aids, hearing loss, age, auditory processing, and accents are other factors might contribute to reductions in the accuracy of speech recognition for rapid and highly variable speech.

Solutions:

• Turning up TV volume

Pros: fast solution

Cons: annoying others, not helpful in speech understanding.

• Closed Captions

Pros: Significantly improve in speech understanding.

Cons: Not available in some TV programs, especially news and live show. Elderly might find difficult to keep up with reading captioned text, or not enjoy watching TV as much when they have to read.

• TV accessories + Hearing aids.

Pros: Transmit the sound directly from your TV to hearing aids, significantly improve in speech understanding. Easy to use.

Cons: Some setup needed to in first time, might be challenging for elderly. Extra cost involved.