For Dr. Stephanie McLellan, Au.D., CCC-A, a packed schedule awaits in the audiology clinic. After entering a few patient notes, she’s ready to see her first patient of the day: Marcus, a 38-year-old “finance bro” who’s managing major accounts – and his hearing loss.
After Marcus’s hearing test, which showed only a minor hearing loss, Dr. McLellan spent a few extra minutes to just talk with Marcus about how he’s handling unexpected challenges. One of her key questions is surprisingly ordinary: “How are phone calls going?” That’s when, almost as an afterthought, Marcus offhandedly mentions that he sometimes lets unknown numbers go to voicemail (don’t we all?). Work calls, too, sometimes.
Answers like these often open up a part of daily life that never makes it onto the intake form. The details vary, of course, but a consistent pattern unfailingly seems to emerge: The pharmacy calls, the boss rings unexpectedly, or someone says a confirmation number at 900 miles per hour – those can be non-trivial events for her patients.
Dr. McLellan relies on her training and skills to diagnose, treat, and help her patients. But they still face heavy lifting afterward. Marcus’s offhand comment about voicemail tells her something the audiogram can’t. Marcus isn’t asking for another discussion about hearing. He’s revealing that the phone has become one place where his usual strategies don’t always work.
In conversations like this, Dr. McLellan’s most useful recommendation isn’t always yet another piece of hardware. Many times, she’s explaining the benefits of real-time call captions that use only the mobile phone her patients already carry. She often suggests Rogervoice, the leading AI-powered app for real-time call captioning. For qualified U.S. users with hearing loss, this FCC-supported service is free. It’s as simple as download, set up, call.
Seeing her opportunity, she walks Marcus through the easy download right in the clinic room. He becomes a registered Rogervoice user before even leaving the clinic. In the parking garage, he calls his wife and raves about how phone calls are now a whole new world for him.
Next up for Dr. McLellan: Alex, 23, whom she’s treated since Alex’s hearing loss developed in first grade. After many years navigating accommodations, Alex is completely uninterested in yet another complicated process in her life. She wants to answer her recruiter, make dinner plans, and take the call from the person she met Saturday night. And she doesn’t want any of those things to turn into some dreaded (and unnecessary) conversation about hearing loss. Alex particularly likes Dr. McLellan’s Rogervoice recommendation – a cool app for her smartphone fits her tech-forward lifestyle – quietly.
After a quick salad for lunch, Dr. McLellan steps into the treatment room to see Ally, 42, a longtime patient. Before Dr. McLellan can even begin audio testing, Ally is raving about her ability to follow calls since she took the recommendation to download Rogervoice. “I had to take this one call in a coffee shop near my office a couple of weeks ago,” said Ally, “and you know how loud those espresso machines can be? Well, it was great and so easy – I can see the number, and the deadline, and the new name – whatever.”
Few audiologists are surprised by the findings of Rogervoice’s 2026 State of the Phone Call Survey that showed 60% of Americans believe phone calls are not fully accessible to people who are deaf or hard of hearing. For patients, the workaround may already be so routine, so well-practiced, that it barely registers as something worth mentioning: Let the call go to voicemail, ask for an email, piece together the missing word, or call back later.
Then there’s the question some patients (or audiologists) might never say out loud: Who hears these calls? That’s a fair question since conversations can often involve sensitive topics: clients, doctors, finances, or family. With Rogervoice, captions are generated entirely by AI. No human ever listens to the call. There are no ads, and Rogervoice does not sell user data. Today, the app has already captioned more than 12 million calls in 100 languages around the world. Rogervoice is built by one of us, for all of us.
“How are your phone calls going?”
You may be surprised by what you learn.
