Possible Discrimination bysamsung and other mobile phone companies.

[seduraed]

I am hearing impaired these days and wear hearing aids in both ears. Modern hearing aids can operate on low-power Bluetooth to allow the streaming of music from the phone to the hearing aids. This system is called ASHA and has been included in Android since the launch of Android 10 and in iPhones since the iPhone 5. It requires the manufacturer to activate the program and this is only a few lines of code.
Samsung only activates this feature in their top-end phones while Apple has it active on all phones. Is this a discrimination case as deafness is a protected characteristic, and the reasonable steps of activating the program on all Samsung phones would only take a few minutes?

[Sam101]

Whilst I appreciate the difficulty you have, as I also wear two hearing aids, the details of each phone offered by all manufacturers clearly shows what is on offer. Should a buyer choose to purchase a phone that does not offer bluetooth, it is their choice.

A buyer has choice to purchase a phone that offers bluetooth or one that does not and the possibility of dispute on this would seem fruitless.

Each additional item that is added to any equipment, be it phones, laptops or PC's will add a cost to the manufacturer, but the buyer has the choice to pay more and have additional benefit.

Personally I have always had a good moan at NHS hearing aids not having bluetooth to help people with our disability and get round having to use headphones, but the same discussion always comes back to the additional cost involved in production.

All we can do is hope that these problems will someday will be solved.

[seduraed]

I can't afford a new phone and didn't know about ASHA until I recently got these hearing aids. All Apple phones have ASHA Activated and some Samsung do. That means activation od ASHA on all phones is possible and available.

[Sam101]

May I ask what make and model of hearing aids you have?

[seduraed]

May I ask what make and model of hearing aids you have?

Oticon, not that makes a difference.

[Ukmicky]

Is this discrimination,no

[seduraed]

Thank you for that , would youmind sharing your reasoning

[Ukmicky]

There is no legal requirement for the telephone manufacturer to provide you with this feature unless the phone is advertised as being sold with the feature.

You may be hearing impaired and that maybe a protected characteristic but that doesn’tt mean every aspect of life or all tech products have take you into account.

Even if it was possible to activate it on your phone, your phone may not be compatible with the feature or have enough processing power to actually run the feature .along side everything else

[Sam101]

Oticon, not that makes a difference.

Thank you.
I looked at Opticon but found them too expensive compared to others that I tried, but I understand there are a number of phones that offer bluetooth and some packages are very reasonable.

I have manages without bluetooth on my hearing aids and can use a bluetooth headset. Hopefully more phones and hearing aids will add this but it is the buyers choice to change phones if they really need that function.

[echat11]

Write to Samsung, challenge them on this. Find out why they think it's o.k. for some models to have a disability aid feature, whilst other models don't have that feature. Why they think having that as a premium feature is fair. See what they have to say.