Reading Glasses and Hearing Aids. Smart or FDA-Approved. Pick One.

Making Audio Augmentation useful for everyone, or pursue the regulatory requirements of OTC hearing aids. This article offers a useful perspective regarding the guidance documents published by the US Food and Drug Administration regarding improved access to hearing aid technology. The agency proposes a rule to establish a new category of over-the-counter (OTC) hearing aids - to be sold directly to consumers in stores or online without a medical exam or a fitting by an audiologist. But most audio manufacturers are better off by not pursuing this FDA-approved OTC market. Doing so will simply hinder critical experimentation and innovation.

Following an earlier presentation at SXSW 2018, of the new Bose AR, the company's concept for an audio augmented reality platform, in the shape of glasses to hear, the Massachusetts company now announced Frames, a product combining the protection and style of premium sunglasses, the functionality and performance of wireless headphones, and the world’s first audio augmented reality platform, combined into a single product. And Bose intends to develop a family of dedicated augmented reality apps for Frames.