iPhone and Hearing Loss

Apple has always designed its products with accessibility in mind. As we begin to crest the wave of yet another extraordinary innovation, let’s look back at some of the accessibility features of our beloved iPhones.

Did you know the iPhone has a “mono” option for transmitting audio? Most audio signals, particularly from music and movies, have a dedicated ‘right’ and ‘left’ channel. This means that some of the sounds are in one ear and not in the other. If you have normal hearing, the multi-channel audio gives us a richer sound experience.

If you have a hearing loss, particularly if you have a hearing loss in only one ear or if your loss is different between your ears, then you will certainly miss some or all of the audio. Switching your iPhone to the ‘mono’ option will keep you from missing the audio.

Switching you iPhone to ‘mono’ is easy.

Open you ‘Settings’ app and scroll down to “General.” Choose the “Accessibility” option and scroll down to the ‘Hearing’ menu. Turn ‘Mono Audio’ on and Voila! You are now getting the full audio signal in both ears.

If you scroll down further in the Accessibility menu, you can adjust the balance of the audio between the right and left channels. This is a great alternative if you don’t want to lose the stereo sound, but you need a little more volume in one ear over the other.

Click on the images below for step-by-step screenshots of this process.

Enjoy!