Apple Announces AirPods Pro Hearing Aid Functionality expands to united Kingdom
Apple on Monday put out a press release in which the company announced its hearing aid feature for AirPods Pro 2 is now available in the United Kingdom. News of the functionality’s expansion comes a few months after Apple launched the hearing aid feature in the United States; it was part of the iOS 18.1 update—the very same that unleashed Apple Intelligence unto the world—delivered to users at the end of October.
Apple boasts the hearing aid feature is “clinical-grade,” but simultaneously stresses the software is intended only for people who cope with mild-to-moderate hearing loss.
“At Apple, we believe that technology can help people live healthier lives, and we’re delighted to bring the Hearing Aid feature to the [United Kingdom], offering our users an end-to-end hearing health experience with AirPods Pro 2,” Dr. Sumbul Desai, Apple’s vice president of health, said in a statement included in the company’s announcement.
As I said when commenting on the company’s 2024, it’s my firm belief that the advent of the hearing aid feature exemplifies the Apple’s oft-stated ambition to make products designed to facilitate the betterment of the world. Nowhere is this illustrated more clearly (and poignantly) than in Apple’s Heartstrings holiday ad which ran towards the end of last year. The spot depicts a family gathering on Christmas morning to open their gifts from Santa Claus. The patriarch of the clan enables the hearing aid function on his AirPods Pro so he can listen to his young adult daughter serenade him after hearing the muffled sounds of everyone’s excited conversation and the ruffling of wrapping paper.
As I wrote back in November, it’s significant that an accessibility feature be thrust into the spotlight for a prominent campaign such as Apple’s annual holiday commercial. Of course there’s marketing and consumerism angles—Apple shrewdly relies on emotional appeal to goad people into buying AirPods partly because they have the potential to better lives—but the arguably more salient point is how disability is put at the forefront. In this sense, Heartstrings is practically a cookie cutter piece, conceptually speaking, to others launched in recent years from Apple. To wit, last year’s The Relay short film comes to mind, as do others like The Greatest and The Lost Voice.
I interviewed Apple’s Sarah Herrlinger about AirPods and hearing aids in December.
