I am a hearing-impaired lawyer who was very grateful when my so-called “mifi” Resound Hearing aids became controllable from my iPhone and was even more pleasantly surprised when my Apple Watch was enabled to control my hearing aids. This was a godsend as phones are not allowed in courtrooms and with Apple Watch controls I could adjust my hearing aids which often requires adjustment using my Watch, without having to use my iPhone (which I am not permitted to use in court). Last year I upgraded my Apple Watch to an Apple Watch 6 and this year my iPhone X to a 13 Pro. All worked well allowing me to control my hearing aids from my watch until late March when the watch controls stopped working and were “grayed out”.
At that point I spent over an hour with Resound Hearing Aid Tech and then another 2 hours with Apple Support, a visit to a Genius at an Apple Store in NY and then quite a bit of time with two support techs at the Accessibility section of Apple Support in efforts to restore the feature. I was finally told that apparently this feature was removed from the latest IOS and Watch systems and that only newer hearing aids which use a different blue tooth frequency will now be controllable with an Apple Watch. It was suggested by my last advisor, Ashley from the Accessibility Support. that I send a request to Apple Feedback, which I have done as well as Tim Cook
FYI, new Blue Tooth hearing aids are very expensive as even my current ones purchased at Costco some years ago cost almost $2000. Thus, I am reticent to purchase new hearing aids as my current ones work adequately, even though this would be very important feature for me both both professionally and personally. I would respectfully ask that other who use their Apple Watch with hearing aids ask Apple, Resound and other hearing aid manufacturers software engineers to reinstate support for the older so-called “mifi” hearing aids if at all possible. I am sure that I am not the only person who will be affected by this change.
Eric Taussig