by jon » Fri Nov 19, 2010 6:21 pm
Good timing on the question, John, as I just replaced my home telephone and headset a couple of days ago, after my low-end Plantronics (apparently an old Radio Shack device that Plantronics still sell as their own) died. I'm better now, but I had neck and back problems at work with a regular telephone, so switched to a headset, which solved my problems immediately, and it has really helped in my first four years of retirement.
In the process of getting a new phone over the last week, I discovered that I could have used my set of three cordless phones with the same new headset that I bought. The standard is a three conductor regular miniplug like that used for headphones on an iPod and practically everything else these days. Only, instead of that plug providing two stereo output channels of audio, it provides two mono channels, one input and the other output, for the microphone.
There may be some old designs around, but any relatively newly designed cordless phone should have a plug for a headset. The low-end Vtech set of three DECT 6.0 technology ones I bought 3+ years ago certainly did. Before that, it was only high end cordless phones that had headset jacks, like my previous IBM one from 1997.
I bought a Panasonic KX-TCA430 headset which is nice because it has a volume control embedded in the cable, as well as Push to Mute button, which the corded phone I bought did not.
Clarity on the ear piece varies widely, so be sure your wife can test it out at home and you can return it if it doesn't work. The Panasonic has sound more like regular headphones, while others I've had are quite shrill.
It sounds like you only need sound in one ear, but there seem to be some headsets with two ear pieces instead of the standard one piece ones. I believe that all one piece ones have reversible mics so you can use it on either ear.
If the standard over the ear type does not work, there are many that embed into the ear, more like a hearing aid, but they vary from ear buds to things that "take over" your whole ear.
One last thing: don't get confused by packaging that talks solely about use with cell phones. If the plug is right, that is all that matters.