Spasmodic Dysphonia Bulletin Board

Just wanted to share a feature of my office phone that has helped me talk on the phone significantly better than any other phone for the last 7 years that I've had AD SD. I've known there was something different about my office phone that allowed me to communicate much better than any other phone but I didn't know what this was until recently. My entire company changed phones recently and sure enough my new phone was no longer working like my old phone. It no longer allowed me to communicate as easily as I could before. I realized it was because I could no longer hear my own voice in my earpiece when speaking into the phone. I went online and did some research and learned that the feature on my old phone that helped me so much was called "sidetone".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sidetone

Sidetone is when you can hear own voice in your earpiece of your phone when speaking. I did some more research and realized my new phone office phone DOES have a sidetone feature as well. I adjusted the sidetone setting and was able to get it to work just like my old phone. I was relieved because i'm not sure I could have done my job without this!

Having the ability to hear my own voice in my ear loud and clear keeps me from thinking I have to speak louder into the phone(which I cant really do well because of the AD SD) and it also helps me regulate the tone of my voice since I can hear exactly what the person on the other end is hearing.

I also wear a headset at work (Plantronics S11) which further increases the amount of sidetone I hear because it also has a sidetone setting.