AirPods Pro are wireless earbuds that offer a range of features designed to enhance audio experiences for users with diverse hearing needs. These features include noise cancellation, spatial audio, adaptive transparency, and a hearing health suite.
Key Accessibility Features
Live Listen
Live Listen turns the iPhone into a remote microphone that sends sound to AirPods Pro, allowing users to hear conversations in noisy environments more clearly.
- Medical Model: This feature addresses the physiological aspects of hearing loss by amplifying and clarifying sounds for the user.
- Social Model: Live Listen helps remove environmental barriers to communication, supporting societal inclusion for people with hearing impairments.
Active Hearing Protection
AirPods Pro offer active Hearing Protection to help prevent exposure to loud environmental noise, using both passive noise reduction from the ear tips and active noise reduction.
- Medical Model: This feature addresses the physiological risk of hearing damage from loud noises, focusing on preventing further hearing impairment.
- Social Model: By integrating hearing protection into a mainstream consumer product, this feature helps normalize hearing health practices in everyday environments.
Hearing Test
A clinical-grade Hearing Test feature allows users to assess their hearing health directly through their AirPods Pro, providing an audiogram and personalized hearing profile.
- Medical Model: The hearing test addresses the diagnostic aspect of hearing impairment, allowing users to monitor their hearing health over time.
- Social Model: By making hearing tests easily accessible through a consumer device, this feature reduces barriers to hearing health awareness and care. I’ve been in hospital for hearing tests myself, where there is complicated equipment and during the process of following the nurse’s orders, I’ve been nervous and afraid I didn’t do it in the right way. It’s not a comfortable experience. I think if I could test it with AirPods at home, the feeling would be much better.
Hearing Aid Functionality
AirPods Pro include an Hearing Aid feature for users with mild to moderate hearing loss, using the personalized hearing profile to enable real-time dynamic adjustments across various audio experiences.
- Medical Model: This feature directly addresses the physiological aspects of hearing loss by providing personalized sound amplification based on individual hearing profiles.
- Social Model: By integrating hearing aid functionality into consumer earbuds, this feature helps reduce the stigma often associated with traditional hearing aids.
Conclusion
AirPods Pro demonstrate how mainstream consumer technology can incorporate accessibility features. By integrating hearing health and assistive listening capabilities into a popular consumer product, they have the potential to improve audio experiences for many individuals with hearing impairments while also promoting hearing health awareness for all users.