Apple gave me early access to their groundbreaking AirPods Pro 2 hearing aids, and the chance to talk to Vice President of Health Dr. Sumbul Desai and Director of Global Accessibility Policy and Initiatives, Sarah Herrlinger. Designed for adults with mild to moderate hearing loss, these over-the-counter hearing aids provide an easy way to explore your hearing health at a place and pace of your choice. A software update next week will make them available to the public, transforming AirPods Pro 2 into one of the most affordable and powerful hearing aids in the world.
Video Descriptive Transcript
Haben Girma, a Black woman in her thirties, holds an AirPods Pro 2 case as she speaks to the camera. On the table in front of her is a small box with engraved AirPods Pro 2 on the side, an iPhone, and a small Brailliant. Behind her are dark blue curtains.
Haben: The coolest new hearing tech is Apple’s AirPods Pro 2! It’s gonna give you the option to transform these into medical-grade hearing aids. Apple gave me early access. They also gave me the chance to talk to Vice President of Health, Dr. Sumbul Desai.
A woman speaks to the camera with a scenic view of Apple Park behind her. She has long dark hair, medium skin tone, and a gold necklace.
Sumbul: So we really wanted to build something that was intuitive, that felt like an extension of a user’s senses. Simple to use, reimagining the software across our engineering, design and acoustics teams to really democratize access to something that affects millions of people.
Haben: And Director of Global Accessibility, Sarah Herrlinger.
A woman speaks to the camera with a scenic view of Apple Park behind her. She has long blonde hair, light skin, and glasses.
Sarah: Adding this in as software allows us to take all of the benefits of AirPods Pro 2—The Grade A microphones, the great speakers, all those things that benefit someone as a hearing aid user—and use that platform to create the best hearing aids in the world.
Haben: We’re going to start with the hearing test.
The video alternates between showing the iPhone screen and showing Haben wearing the AirPods Pro 2 as she advances through the program.
Apple’s VoiceOver: Hearing assistance. Take a hearing test. Button (activation sound). Test your hearing. Hearing loss is common and can get worse over time. A five minute test can identify if you have hearing loss. If you have mild or moderate hearing loss, AirPods Pro can provide hearing assistance that makes voices, music, and the sounds around you easier to hear. Note if you’ve experienced a sudden change in your hearing, you should talk to a doctor. Get started, button.
Haben: I’m Deafblind. So I also have a Braille computer with me. One of the things I’m really excited about is that if you want to explore your hearing and you also have an additional disability like blindness or a physical disability, you can tap into Apple’s ecosystem of accessibility features.
Sarah: That’s the other thing that we always think about when we’re building for accessibility is everyone’s experience is unique, and people may have multiple disabilities that we need to be able to accommodate as well. So to your point, knowing that all of the settings for how to use your hearing aids also work with VoiceOver for someone who might be a member of the Deafblind community and want to get all of that information in an auditory manner is really important to us.
Haben: I’m at home. And I really, really like that you have the option to take this at a place of your choice. I’ve had some painful experiences where medical professionals take me away from my family and put me in this tiny isolation cell, and then throw a bunch of tests at me. That is stressful!
Sumbul: I’m sorry to hear that, but I know exactly what you’re talking about. Because sometimes the medical community, we can do better in terms of how we manage those experiences. And that was definitely top of mind for us when we thought about how do we create a hearing test that you could do at home that we can, you know, make it easy and simple to access, but actually make it delightful, too.
Haben: And this gives you the option to do it at a place of your choice, where you feel safe and comfortable and can process information at your own speed.
The video alternates between showing the iPhone screen and showing Haben wearing the AirPods Pro 2 as she advances through the program.
Apple’s VoiceOver: Find a quiet place where you can focus and take the test. Heading. Too much background noise can cause inaccurate results in your test. Show suggestions to reduce noise. Button. Next, button (activation sound). AirPods will check the fit in each ear and measure background noise. Heading. Music will play during the check. This is not the hearing test. Start the check. Button. In-progress. (Music) Do not remove AirPods.
Haben: Some people are very early on their hearing journey and may be wondering, do I have hearing loss? What do I do? How do I disclose? And that is an emotionally tricky place to be. Because the AirPods are so cool and visually recognized all over the world, having these hearing aids gives people the choice to control when and how they disclose.
Sumbul: And so when we were identifying the opportunity to help, we also looked at some data that showed us that about 75% of people diagnosed with hearing loss don’t actually get the treatment they need. And we saw an opportunity to fill a need. And to your point, we wondered if stigma was a big portion of that of, you know, not getting over the hump to go get the help you need because you’re concerned about that stigma. And so we decided to really take on this experience with the thought that knowing everyone’s hearing is different.
Haben: A tenet of disability justice is nothing about us without us. So I asked Apple: What role did deaf and hard of hearing people play in the creation of these hearing aids?
Sarah: We have always believed very strongly in that disability mantra of nothing about us without us. It starts with hiring individuals with disabilities within our own ranks in order to make sure that as we are building any of our assistive technology, we’re not building for, we’re building with.
The video alternates between showing the iPhone screen and showing Haben wearing the AirPods Pro 2 as she advances through the program.
Apple’s VoiceOver: The fit is good and it’s quiet enough to test your hearing. Heading. Don’t remove or adjust your AirPods until you finish the hearing test. Next button (activation sound). Do Not Disturb will be on during the test. Heading. This helps prevent distractions. The hearing test will take about five minutes. Next, button (activation sound). The test will play tones at different volumes and frequencies. Heading. And will pulse three times. Play sample, button. Next, button (activation sound). During the test, listen carefully and tap the screen each time you hear a tone. Heading. Next, button (activation sound). It’s okay if you miss a tone, you will have another chance to hear it. Heading. Start test, button. Starting test. (Triple beep).
Haben: A lot of the tech we love today started out as disability tech and then soon became mainstream tech. For example, audiobooks started out as special books on tape just for blind people. But now lots of sighted people love audiobooks! I asked Apple: What inspired Apple to take hearing aids on this journey?
Sarah: One of the things we know is that building for accessibility can have great benefits for everyone. There’s a long history of our work that has been expanded into other areas within Apple products. When you think about something like double tap on Apple Watch, that the nexus of that started with Assistive Touch for Apple Watch, which was a feature we built in for individuals who are upper body limb different. Same with things like Type to Siri as a feature that started to support the deaf and hard of hearing community as they used Siri on iPhone, iPad and on the Mac. And it’s grown to something that can be used by many people in the world. So this is not something that’s been new to us. And in this case, you know, it’s been a great opportunity to look at the work that we’ve been doing around support for individuals with hearing loss through programs like the Made For iPhone hearing aid program that we started a decade ago. And as we built in features for that, we realized how some of those great, interesting elements like Live Listen or headphone accommodations could be valuable to so many users, whether they self-identified as having hearing loss or not. And so this is really just a continuation of that really long commitment to building in features to support individual user needs, but how those can then be expanded to become things that apply across much broader use cases.
Haben: More choices, personalized hearing tech for more people around the world.