The Streaming Support of Android for Hearing Aids

Unfortunately, the modern living is deliberately noisy! While the era of our predecessors lacked machines, engines, cacophony, and amplified music, the life in our time has become overly exposed to an unending parade of clamor! Some of us have gladly embraced the noisy lives – residing in a jam-packed cosmopolitan city, appreciating the ear-blasting rock music, listening to blaring music via earphones…..and the list is endless! Midst such “noisy” lifestyle, we seldom get a chance to protect our ears, which might lead us to suffer from an untimely hearing disability in future. There might be someone with hearing disability in your family or peer group as well. Just like most of the critical medical conditions, a hearing loss is extremely complicated as well. Relationships could be extremely difficult as family and friends would struggle immensely to understand how to interact with someone who is unable to hear.

Hearing disability is not an immediately recognized impairment. You will be startled to know that around 466 million people across the world suffer from profound to severe hearing disabilities. And, this ratio is going to soar in leaps and bounds by the year 250! Certainly, our world has a fair share of people, who have combated their hearing impairment and emerged victorious in the end. To make their journey a little less tough, Google has made Android Operating System a tad more accessible to users with hearing impairments. It has finally included some supports for streaming through the hearing aids. Google has released an open specification for hearing aid streaming support on future versions of different Android devices. It means that if a user with a hearing disability is using a hearing aid, he/she can pair, connect and also monitor the device to listen to a phone call loudly as well as clearly. Using this hearing aid, they can listen to music or any other audio sound as well.

The Audio Streaming for Hearing Aids aka ASHA, which is the prime protocol specification of the hearing aid uses Bluetooth and has been tailored to have a minimum impact on the battery life with low-latency. It also emphasizes on maintaining a premium quality audio experience for the users who are counting on such hearing aids. The users can control the sound according to their preferences or requisites with help of their Android devices. They can also control their devices’ battery longevity and listen to any audio content they want.

Any hearing aid manufacturer can build the support for their Android devices with help of some specifications. The very first company the Internet Search Giant is collaborating with is a Denmark-based company named GN Hearing. With the aid of ASHA, a direct streaming will be available on the ReSound LiNX Quattro of GN Hearing. Wondering who can make this magical hearing aid? A well-proficient and truly knowledgeable hearing manufacturer can build a native hearing aid support for different Android devices.

The introduction to hearing aids in Android has undoubtedly brought the manifold opportunities for the hearing disabled people to explore sound and different audio content with a remarkable ease. Happy reading!