For many years Apple has been a great company when it comes to pushing the accessibility of its products for disabled users — from features like VoiceOver, which allow for descriptions of apps to be read aloud for the blind, to FaceTime which represented a breakthrough in allowing deaf people to communicate with one another using a mobile device.
In a new video for CNN Money, the latest step of that evolution is shown as a deaf Apple Watch owner demonstrates how he can use the device to control his hearing aid.
Using an app on his Apple Watch, the individual is able to easily switch between modes — be it having the hearing aid function as a Bluetooth music receiver, or else listen to sounds (such as traffic) around him. He can also fine-tune the device depending on different conditions, such as listening to someone in a restaurant versus trying to carry out a conversation outside, while blocking out extraneous noise.
In all, it’s a pretty powerful reminder of just how much technology like the Apple Watch can improve lives. And we don’t just mean letting you send you heartbeat to another person.
Via: Patently Apple
Luke Dormehl is a U.K.-based journalist and author, with a background working in documentary film for Channel 4 and the BBC. He is the author of The Apple Revolution and The Formula: How Algorithms Solve All Our Problems … and Create More, both published by Penguin/Random House. His tech writing has also appeared in Wired, Fast Company, Techmeme and other publications.
12 responses to “The Apple Watch is already improving the lives of deaf users”
Man, so awesome…
How do you sign “my apple watch battery is dead yet AGAIN”?
Sounds like you are just jealous of successful people.
The sheep says “bahhhhhh”.
If you’re Apple Watch is so essential to your day to day life, I’d say that you’re irresponsible to let that happen.
The sheep says “bahhhhhh”
But what do you do with your Apple Watch? Play Asphalt? GTA? To use up that much battery that you charge it twice a day, that’s something
The sheep says “bahhhhhh”..
Yeah, Every one is saying there getting two days out of one charge. With this Watch.
Hmm. Really Though. That was a kinda foul comment. Seriously.
Says you and you alone.
That doesn’t take away from it being valid.