- Lifestyle
- Wellbeing
By Sarah Berry
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About one in six Australians experience hearing loss.
And even mild loss can have a significant impact on our lives.
People with mild hearing loss are twice as likely to develop dementia than those with normal hearing, are more likely to experience loneliness and social isolation, and have a 51 per cent higher chance of having a fall.
Yet, many people with mild to moderate hearing loss never seek help.
In 2021, Apple, in collaboration with the University of Michigan School of Public Health and the World Health Organisation, tested the hearing health of 160,000 adults.
“A number of participants had hearing loss and didn’t know it,” says Dr Rajiv Kumar, a physician-researcher who works at Apple. “That wasn’t surprising to us. But, a lot of them had hearing loss and knew it and 75 per cent of them never went on to use corrective technology.”
Why? “When we dug into why it often dealt with themes like cost or access or stigma.”
Today, Apple is releasing the Hearing Test and Hearing Aid features in Australia, using the AirPods Pro 2 (retail $399). People can do the Hearing Test on iPhone or iPad, but can use the Hearing Aid feature on iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple TV or anything your AirPods can connect to.
Best suited to people who are on the lower end of the hearing loss spectrum, they are not designed to replace traditional hearing aids. However, Kate Bergeron, Apple’s vice president of Hardware Engineering says they can assist with loud sound reduction, even for those who are not presenting with hearing loss.
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Six years in development, features include a scientifically validated Hearing Test, a clinical-grade Hearing Aid feature, and Loud Sound Reduction.
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The hearing health features were approved for use in the United States and Canada, and follows the December approval by the Therapeutics Goods Administration (TGA) for Apple’s AirPods Pro 2 to be used as hearing aids.
The idea to address hearing health began in 2019, with the AirPods pro generation 1, but they lacked the capability at that time.
Apple used its in-house anechoic chamber, which creates a noise and echo-free environment via wall-to-wall protruding foam prisms, to test the sound in the hearing aid feature to ensure it was as natural as possible.
In an audio lab, 50 speakers hooked to a spherical dome create various soundscapes, like the ambient noise in a restaurant, to allow developers to fine tune the hearing aid feature.
Though, at a normal conversation level, they were close to the most widely used hearing aid prescription in the world, NAL-NL2, the AirPods under amplified soft sounds and over amplified loud sounds.
Today, however, Apple has resolved these issues.
Nicky Chong‑White, the principal engineer at the National Acoustic Laboratories, has been testing the hearing features in her lab since Apple first released headphone accommodations in 2019.
“The new version is very close to our own hearing aid prescription,” says Chong‑White.
And, as a popular consumer device, they can remove a lot of the stigma attached to traditional hearing aids. “I see them as situational devices,” she says. “If you go to a noisy place you put them in for an hour, and then you take them out.”
Despite some criticisms that the sound, compared with other devices, is “okay but hollow”, the ability to also listen to music and movies will make them an attractive, multipurpose option for some.
Still, they are not for everyone.
AirPods are limited in their power output. This means that for those with quite severe hearing loss, it can’t make the sounds loud enough.
“Also, the higher tech hearing aids have quite a lot of features,” Chong‑White explains. “They automatically switch programs, they detect speech, they can focus microphones in a certain direction and can make it narrow to focus just on one person and block out people to the side and behind.”
Her husband, who suffers from hearing loss, still requires $8000 hearing aids: “That’s what he needs, but there’s a large population who don’t wear hearing aids who do have hearing loss or hearing difficulty and I see it as a product that can help.”
Kumar hopes the feature can make people more aware of their hearing and changes over time, and for those who develop hearing loss, enhance their surrounding environment.
The writer was a guest of Apple.
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