There’s a guy I know (but not well enough to ask him this directly).
I’ve seen on a few occasions he has a small oval-shaped disk attached to his head. It’s about an inch across. He wears it a little ways above his right ear.
It’s not attached to his ear nor does it have any wires which run to his ear, so I don’t feel it’s a hearing aide.
It sticks to his head but it’s not permanently attached. In fact, it’s probably relatively easy to remove because sometimes I’ll see him wearing it for a while and then later I’ll notice it’s no longer there. So apparently he can remove it with relatively little fuss when he wants to.
There’s nothing underneath this thing except his skin, so it’s not plugged in or anything. He keeps his hair very short but he doesn’t actually shave his head at the spot where he wears it.
I also think he has more than one because I’m pretty sure I’ve seen a black one and a beige one.
All the images I can find of those show them being worn behind the ear. This guy wears whatever it is above his ear. And he doesn’t seem to have any hearing difficulties when he doesn’t wear it. So I’m not saying this is a definite no but I feel it might be something else.
Huh, one of my colleagues has a bad ear, and wears that same tattoo. It’s an easy, practical way to let people know that they should stand on the other side to carry on a conversation.
I don’t think so. It doesn’t directly touch his ear. So if he’s getting sound from it, it’s going through his skin and bone. Which seems a complicated way to listen to something when your ear is just an inch away.
I don’t know if hearing aids/speakers “leak” noise but I’ve never heard any noise coming out of it, even when I’m sitting next to him at a table.
From reading Wikipedia, the sound going through the bone - but not the skin - is the entire point of a BAHA.
Reading on, it seems some kinds of hearing impairment only are in issue in some situations. It would therefore be entirely reasonable for him to only sometimes need it.
Because the device vibrates the wearers bone instead of using tiny loudspeakers, I wouldn’t expect any sound to be audible. At least not at the level of intimacy you seem to share.
One the other hand, one should expect a socket to be visible when the sound processor is removed. Search for BAHA abutment if you want to know what that looks like.
