People that use hearing aids (and a ton of people who don’t) will be thankful.
I’m a relatively new hearing aid user, having used them for just a few months, but they’ve, along with a remote microphone in some situations, have made it possible for me to do things I couldn’t do before. I can eat at a restaurant with friends and participate in the conversation. I can hear coworkers at in-person meetings. I can understand the person on the other end of the drive-through. At my university, I can not only hear the professor, but I can hear the questions other students ask. I wish I investigated this years ago, and I encourage others to, if possible, talk to an audiologist if they are having trouble understanding others. It might change your life.
But, I’m also a techie, who is passionate about how tools can help people with disabilities. Tech, of which the hearing aids are just one tool in my collection, lets me live a life where I can participate in the world, keep myself healthy, and do the things I want to do. But when the tech falls short, I also see the gap and feel a sadness for what the world could be, but isn’t.
How Bluetooth Works on my Hearing Aids
One of the features of modern hearing aids is support for Bluetooth. This lets me easily take phone calls or even just listen to music. While there are nearly infinite ways hearing aids can be programmed, what my audiologist and I have set up is a program where, typically, Bluetooth will mute most of the outside world, so I can focus on hearing the person on a phone call or simply relax with music away from the noise of the world. This is not an unusual way for hearing aids to operate.
The hearing aids essentially pair just like a set of wireless earbuds to my devices. My hearing aids can remember 10 different devices and be paired to two of them at any one time, such as my car and my phone. So far, so good.
Hearing Aids aren’t Headphones
But hearing aids aren’t headphones, even if the phone thinks they are. Or, rather, they are used quite differently.
If I didn’t use hearing aids, but wanted to use, say, Airpods with my phone, I’d stick them in my ear when I wanted to use them with the phone, and they’d pair with the phone and let me listen to music, make phone calls, etc. When I wanted to talk to someone, I’d probably remove them, maybe even sticking them in their charger. While I recognize Airpods have some hearing-aid-like features these days with the iPhone (albeit much less sophisticated), most people probably wouldn’t wear them in a meeting, at class, or when trying to talk to someone at a restaurant.
If I have Airpods in my ears, I’m probably engaged with the phone. At least with my ears.
If you’ve read this carefully, you’ve picked up a few differences, and that leads to some aspects where the design goals for an ideal hearing aid experience with a phone differ from that of an ideal earbud experience:
- Hearing aids aren’t going to be recharged during the day, so battery life is critical.
- Hearing aids aren’t going to be removed when someone wants to disengage with the phone, so it’s possible a hearing aid user has them inserted but isn’t interested in using the phone’s audio.
- When someone is using hearing aids, they might be focused on something else that shouldn’t be interrupted.
But there is more, and it’s a bit more complex than this. But we’ll start with these.
Battery Life – Let me easily NOT use it for audio!
My hearing aids are rechargable, as that’s more convenient for me. Generally, the battery lasts all day, which is good, because I hear better with them! But a guaranteed way to make them run out of battery is listen to Bluetooth audio for a significant chunk of the day. Being paired takes some energy, but the real draw is communicating via Bluetooth with an audio stream. The alternative is to use a hearing aid that takes a disposable battery, but of course that means either planning out battery life or carrying batteries with you, lest you get stranded without your full hearing! So, regardless, battery life is going to be a concern.
So what does that mean for the phone? Ideally I’d be able to only have the device connect to the phone’s audio when I wanted it to–not whenever the hearing aids are powered on and somewhere within range of the phone. Give me a manual “use for audio” button for the hearing aids, with it defaulted to off! So when I use my phone, I can select the hearing aids easily, but only when I want to. It’s fine if it is always paired and connected, just don’t open an audio stream when it’s in the it is set to not be used for audio. Even if I open a different app!
Sure, I know if I’m on a phone call or watching a video, I can switch where the audio goes, but if I switch to another task, the phone very well might then start sending different audio to my hearing aids. That’s not what I want!
Silencing my Phone
There’s a switch people who don’t use hearing aids can use on their phone to mute the ringer. Without a bunch of work, however, that switch doesn’t stop notifications, ringing, etc, from going to my hearing aids! It would be nice if I could say, “Please don’t send any notifications to my hearing aids when the phone is silenced, but if I answer the phone, then you can send that to my hearing aids” (but please don’t announce the caller, I can feel the vibration when the phone is on silent, if I even care).
What do I want to hear via the hearing aids?
Basically the only three things I ever want to hear on my phone is video I intentionally started (not a random web ad!), music, and actual phone calls.
I don’t want to hear my phone’s unlock sound. I should be able to unlock my phone without it muting whatever is going on in the real world so I can hear the clicks of each digit of my PIN! Just play those through the phone speaker. Likewise, I might want the phone to ring, but not ring in my hearing aids. Or to notify me of an event or reminder, but not interrupt who I’m talking to. So I’m fine with that just coming from the phone’s speaker. I prefer that to asking whoever I was talking with to repeat what they just said because my phone grabbed the audio on my hearing aids for 30 seconds.
And, as mentioned above, I definitely don’t want to hear web ads. There is literally never a time when I want to hear them. It’s bad enough for everyone, I’m sure, but if I go to certain websites (news websites are the worst), suddenly there is an audio stream open to my hearing aids and I can’t hear what is going on around me anymore. That stinks.
So let me control routing of audio, ideally on a “type of audio” and maybe a per-app basis on top of it. This is in addition to the normal audio destination selection you can do with, say, Apple Music using the Airplay destination selection control.
Beyond that, don’t make me fight to show my wife a funny cat video. Make it easy for me to switch the audio to my speaker instead of my hearing aids, even when it’s something I’d normally want to hear on my hearing aids. Sure, sometimes that is easy, but it seems how easy it is depends on the player and app. That’s not ideal.
I use Carplay. Let me use Carplay!
Let me prioritize Carplay or my hearing aids for some of the audio streams. Maybe I want Carplay to be used for directions, notifications, the phone ringing, but not phone calls. Or maybe I always want Carplay to be used by default. For me, I typically want to hear whoever is in the car with me (if anyone), and definitely the sounds from around the car. So I take my phone calls via the car’s audio system, not my hearing aids. But different users probably have different preferences. Regardless, to do this, I often spend the first 30 seconds of a phone call fighting with my phone to switch the audio (which is buggy anyhow with Carplay and there’s a 50/50 shot I’ll need to unplug the cable to my phone and plug it back in again), and I’d guess half the time end up getting disconnected from who I’m trying to talk to. Let me just say “When I’m using Carplay, don’t send audio to my hearing aids unless I override it for something.”
Yes, I Know There are Work-arounds!
I know I can set up profiles on my phone to silence certain sounds. Yes, I know I can turn Bluetooth off completely on my phone (which then prevents me from using my hearing aid manufacturer’s app to control my hearing aids!). Yes, I know I can unpair and re-pair. And there may be other work-arounds I haven’t figured out. But I don’t want work-arounds. I want first-class respect as a paying customer in the design of the device I use. Especially when that device might cost upwards of $1,000!
Is this really Apple’s Fault?
I won’t completely say the manufacturer of my aid is blameless, but, yes, I do think this is more an Apple problem than a hearing aid problem. I do wish my aids supported the most modern Bluetooth protocol, which uses less energy than the version my aids support (that’s important because my hearing aid’s rechargeable battery really needs to last me all day–and Bluetooth takes energy). I wish they supported the MFi (Made for iPhone) hearing aid profile that is supported on the iPhone, which allows a bit more control without using the hearing aid manufacturer’s app. But honestly these are relatively small issues.
The bigger issue is that even with support of slightly newer Bluetooth or MFi functionality, my problems would remain. Beyond that, Bluetooth isn’t the only consideration in selecting a hearing aid model. I need a model that fits in my life, fits my hearing profile, and maximizes my chance of understanding whatever I’m hearing. Things like battery life, form factor, fit, and processing features matter, too. We also need aids that can be supported by our audiologists! Simply put, there are a lot of considerations, and even if the aids’ Bluetooth support was perfect on the aids themselves (which it probably won’t be because there is always trade-offs), the problems I described would still remain.
Apple is known for world-class, cutting edge design. So I expect that, if it was a priority, they would create something beyond all my expectations. Kind of like the first iPhone which was unlike anything else!
Apple can and should do better.
Digital Barbed Wire 