Hearing Aid Compatibility is coming for all US Phones

At the end of November, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) in the US issued a mandate that all mobile phones sold in the US will soon need to be able to work with hearing aids. It’s a massive advance for hearing loss advocates and hearing aid manufacturers, who have been working towards this goal for more than a decade. (The full mandate is available on the FCC site.)

This all goes back to the Hearing Aid Compatibility (HAC) Act of 1988, in which the US Government put forward requirements for “essential” landline phones and wireless communication devices to work with hearing aids. In practice, that meant that they needed to prove that they could work acoustically without interference, or include an inductive transmitter which would work with the telecoils inside hearing aids. At that time, there were lots of exemptions, largely due to cost and the limitation of the technology available. Because of that, the FCC was also required to assess periodically these exemptions on a regular basis and to revoke or limit them as technology evolved.

In 1988, nobody expected the growth of mobile phones, nor that we would all consider them to be essential. As they arrived, the FCC extended the mandate, requiring a percentage of all cellphones to add Hearing Aid Compatibility, which was generally by the inclusion of telecoil support in at least one model of a manufacturer’s range. For companies who only made a few models, that meant they needed to include HAC support in all of their range, which some considered an unnecessary cost burden. To try to address that, they started to develop proprietary Bluetooth protocols, of which the best known is Apple’s Mfi scheme, which they licensed to a number of hearing aid manufacturers. However, the FCC and the hearing aid industry were concerned that this could lead to a proliferation of incompatible, proprietary solutions from different phone manufacturers and preferred a course to a single, interoperable standard to connect phones to hearing aids. In 2013, EHIMA – the body which represents the hearing aid manufacturers, joined forces with the Bluetooth SIG to start the development of what was to become Bluetooth LE Audio. Over the course of the next ten years this initiative gathered support from the entire audio industry, and has now been adopted as the basis for the future of wireless audio. As well as supporting high quality audio streaming and phone calls, it also enables broadcast audio streaming so that multiple listeners can hear the same sound. Known as Auracast?, this can be used for sharing music from a phone or a TV, or providing coverage in schools, bars, community centres and concert halls. It was recently demonstrated in the Lincoln Centre in New York and the first Auracast? products are coming to market.

Many of those involved in the hearing loss community have been petitioning the FCC to extend its Hearing Aid Compatibility requirement to all phones, and with the adoption and demonstration of Auracast? the FCC has accepted that this is the future for hearing aids. In two years’ time, every phone sold in the US must support HAC, either with a telecoil or Bluetooth. As almost every phone already includes a Bluetooth chip, and Bluetooth LE Audio is equally beneficial for consumer earbuds and speakers, it’s fairly clear which way manufacturers will go. There is then a further two year grace period, where proprietary Bluetooth solutions, such as Mfi and ASHA are allowed, but from 2028 it looks as if Bluetooth LE Audio and Auracast? will become the industry standard.

Telecoils will not disappear. Whilst the phone industry has a fast time to market and a relatively short update cadence, hearing aids involve lengthy medical approval cycles and are replaced far less often. That means that both telecoil and Bluetooth will be supported together for some considerable time. However, the far lower installation cost of Auracast? infrastructure, along with the fact that it supports consumer applications as well as hearing loss means that more and more venues (which could never afford Telecoil installations) will support it. It is all good news for anyone with hearing loss, as well as anyone who want to hear better. It also opens up exciting new use cases for the audio industry. The FCC mandate is a great achievement for everyone who has been involved in the development of Bluetooth LE Audio. I hope that other regulators will follow their lead in making this a global requirement.