Apple recently aired an emotional new holiday ad promoting the hearing aid features of the AirPods Pro 2. Now, Sarah Herrlinger, Apple's global head of accessibility, has shared more details about the company's efforts to build health features in an interview.
Apple Exec Talks About Using AirPods as Hearing Aids
According to Herrlinger (via Forbes), the new hearing aid features introduced this year for the AirPods Pro 2 reaffirm Apple’s “longstanding commitment” to making technology accessible to everyone. The executive said there are more than 1.5 billion people worldwide with hearing loss, and the company’s own research found that 75% of those people “don’t get the assistive support they need.”
Herrlinger notes that Apple was the first company to use Bluetooth LE for audio, which led to the first LEA (Low Energy Audio) protocol for streaming audio from a smartphone to a hearing aid. “We’ve since introduced awareness and accessibility features for hearing, like headphone audio levels, headphone accommodations, and conversation enhancement,” she said.
The executive believes that the technology built into the AirPods Pro 2 is a “first-of-its-kind, comprehensive hearing health experience,” and that it’s the result of “years of learning” by software engineers, acousticians, designers, and more at Apple. By turning the wireless earbuds into hearing aids, Apple is bringing “clinical-grade” features to anyone 18 and older.
The AirPods Pro 2 gained hearing aid capabilities with iOS 18.1, which was released to the public in October. Users can run a test to identify potential hearing loss, then use the results to configure their AirPods to function as hearing aids.
Earlier this month, Herrlinger spoke at Web Summit Lisbon 2024. They talked about how Apple is using AI to improve the lives of people with disabilities through technologies like eye tracking, sound recognition, and AssistiveTouch.
Be sure to read the full interview on Forbes.
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