I beg to disagree with you Mary as I'm one of those hearing impaired
people and Apple - as have the folk at Google - have done some really
wonderful stuff when it comes to the incusion of deaf-blind people in
the scheme of things.
Bluetooth is an everyday word in the technology of deaf-blind people and
hearing instruments these days, I'm on my third set of Bluetooth enabled
hearing instruments and both Samsung Galaxy S6 and Apple iPhone 6S work
a treat with these so I've no reason to think that the S7 won't be any
different.
Even when I'm not using Bluetooth with my mobile devices - which is most
of the time by the way - the speaker can be made to go very loud with
Voiceover and that's just one speaker, imagine what an iPhone would
sound like with two?
There are a lot of things one can customise with the iPhone to make life
easier with hearing instruments, one can even control the hearing
instrument with an iPhone, use the iPhone as a microphone for your
hearing instruments - extremely handy when you're enjoying someone elses
company at a table for two in a noisy environment -, send mono audio to
your hearing instruments which can be useful for those who have better
hearing in one ear than the other etc.
Really the point here is that - if you want to use technology - then
that technology is continually changing and evolving - in most cases for
the better - so the user has two distinct choices, use what they're
using which will eventually fall behind and be replaced or keep up with
what's going on and accept the changes as they happen - that doesn't
mean that one must have the latest devices on hand of course -.
On 11/03/2016 8:49 AM, Mary Otten wrote:
The problem with all this forward thinking is that it leaves the
hearing impaired out. Jonathan Mosen has done some very good writing on
this topic. I personally have the equipment to deal with the loss of
the headphone jack. But in thinking of what it will mean for others, I
think it is a stupid idea at this time and, if it is just to make the
damned phone a hair thinner, it is clearly not worth it and is just
another money-making angle for Apple. But this one is coming at the
expense of a fairly large and growing segment of the population.
Mary
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Those who don't need help are prepared to help themselves
