Face masks have unequivocally been a good thing when it comes to helping prevent the spread of COVID-19. But they present challenges when trying to communicate with others. Especially if you or the person you’re communicating with has hearing loss. 

Face masks muffle speech and block important lip-reading cues. Both are key to understanding speech. Add in social distancing or group video chats — which have nothing to do with masks but plenty to do with speech audibility — and this pandemic has definitely made it a lot harder to hear what people are saying.

Hearing aids can help

It should be no surprise, though, that hearing aids offset these challenges and can help make it easier to hear people who are wearing face masks. By their very nature, hearing aids amplify sound which, in many cases, is all it takes to hear what face-mask wearers are saying.

Our new hearing aids can help even more

New hearing aid technology has been engineered to go above and beyond simple sound amplification to specifically tackle the challenges created by face masks, social distancing and background noise. 


Our Edge Mode technology — available only in our Livio Edge AI hearing aids — has been proven to be highly effective in resolving speech intelligibility issues caused by masks. 

How? By putting the power of artificial intelligence (AI) at your fingertips. 

Just a double tap of your hearing aids activates Edge Mode anytime you need it. Once activated, Edge Mode scans the acoustic environment you’re in, then instantly optimizes sound — taking masks, distance and background noise into consideration — to deliver enhanced speech audibility on demand.

Not only is Edge Mode great for masks, it’s handy to have anytime you encounter a noisy or particularly challenging listening environment.


Our new Mask Mode, too, was specifically designed to make people who are wearing masks easier to hear. Mask Mode is a new custom memory in our Thrive app that offsets the loss of speech audibility due to face masks by boosting sound in the affected regions. Mask Mode is available on select Livio hearing aid technology levels. 


The ideal hearing aid for today

But if you really want the ideal hearing solution for our mask wearing times, you’ll want our Livio Edge AI custom rechargeable hearing aids. Not only do they help make hearing easier — thanks to Edge Mode and more — but because they fit in your ear and not behind them, they won’t get tangled or pulled off when you’re wearing or removing your face mask.

And, they’re the only wireless custom rechargeable hearing aids you can buy.

Listen, 2020 has been challenging enough. You owe it to yourself to at least make hearing the things you love easy.