Panasonic

By Cheryl Heppner

My first stop was with Panasonic, which has its booth located right inside the entrance to the Exhibit Hall. It was great to reconnect with Tony Jasionowski, Sr. Group Manager for the company’s Accessibility Technology Liaison and Alliance Group. Tony introduced me to some of the company’s newest line of digital cordless phones whose boxes all displayed the logo for meeting TIA standards for hearing aid compatibility.

The models on display included the KX-TG6441 with one handset at $69.95 retail and the 2-handset KX-TG6432 model at $79.95. Panasonic’s cordless line now has lots of options with features such as conference capability, Ringer ID, lighted handset keypad, speakerphone on handset, handset locator, handset intercom, and Call Waiting Caller ID. There are 27 different cordless phone choices. All have DECT 6.0 (Digital Enhanced Cordless Telecommunication), which operates on the 1.9GHz frequency and is designed to offer excellent sound quality, reduced interference, long range and extended battery life.

Panasonic is one of the companies I have pestered to make it easy to access captions on their line of televisions by having a caption button on the TV remote control, as well as one on the TV itself in case the remote is lost or the battery dies. Tony proudly showed me the remote for the sleek 42” Panasonic TV that the company has donated for a drawing here at HLAA, and even more proudly handed me the remote control. There in the top row of buttons was a clearly marked “cc”. Of course that merited a big hug! The cc button’s addition to the remote has now become a company standard. If you’re as delighted as I am, you can send your thanks to Tony at jasionowskit@us.panasonic.com.

See more of Cheryl Heppner reports of the 2009 Hearing Loss Association of America Convention at NVRC.