My Starkey

Category

Description of App

Take control of your hearing experience with My Starkey. Create custom settings. Get personalized tips. Track health goals. Control volume and more. My
Starkey puts you in charge of your hearing journey and overall wellness. All at your fingertips.
Created with the help of hearing aid wearers, this easy-to-use app allows you to:
HEAR BETTER ANYWHERE.

Make instant adjustments for clearer speech and reduced noise – even in the toughest listening environments. Plus, customize sound settings for your favorite
places. Equalizer and volume? You control them. With My Starkey, your hearing aids are just the way you need them. At all times.
GET TIPS, TOOLS AND RESOURCES.

Adapt to hearing aids faster with quick how-to's, tips, and videos. All tailored for where you are on your hearing journey. Access remote hearing aid adjustments
from your hearing care professional – right from your armchair. Lose a hearing aid? Use My Starkey to track the location and simplify your life.
MONITOR HEALTH AND WELLNESS.

Monitor daily hearing and physical activity to help you stay healthy. Set and achieve goals for hearing, steps, exercise, and beyond. Get personal and
detailed insights into your activity levels. My Starkey can even detect your falls and notify the people you choose – keeping you safe while active.
And much more.

It’s never been easier to take control of your hearing journey. And live your best life – with My Starkey.

Version

v1.0.3 June 2023

Free or Paid

Free

Apple Watch Support

No

Device(s) App Was Tested On

iPhone

iOS Version

16.5.1

Accessibility Comments

Some buttons are labelled. The app uses many images and they do not have alternative text. Information can be found by digging deeper into the ap though, such as battery status. Some sliders in the app give strange value readings usually from 1 to 255, so one must kind of do some mental math to figure out what the percentage really is, i.e., 128 is 50%.
The equalizes to adjust a program’s sound settings further for Bass, Middle and Treble are inaccessible and inoperable for VoiceOver. Therefore a VoiceOver user can only change Noise and Wind settings for a program.
It is still a useful app for a Starkey hearing aid user but unfortunately some features are inaccessible.

VoiceOver Performance

VoiceOver reads most page elements.

Button Labeling

Most buttons are clearly labeled.

Usability

There are some accessibility issues with this app, but it can still be used if you are willing to tolerate these issues and learn how to work around them.

Other Comments

Below is an overview of some of the main areas of the app with some usage tips that I have found when using it with VoiceOver. This summary is not an attempt at rewriting the user guide, refer to that for more explanation of features and settings.

Note: this app does not have a demo mode. At this time you must have the Starkey Genesis AI hearing aids on and connected to your device in order to use the My Starkey app.

Sign up: First you will be prompted to make an account and/or sign in. This is accessible enough I had no issues using VoiceOver.

Home: This screen has some images with information that are not accessible to VoiceOver. In addition the VoiceOver swipe order is a bit confusing. Here is what is going on: using the VoiceOver swipe left to right gesture starting at the top of the app:
1. L - an inaccessible image of more information presumably about the left aid
2. R - an inaccessible image of more information presumably about the right aid
3. Assistant button – correctly labelled button that launches the My Starkey Assistant that takes voice commands
4. Text label that is the current program’s name usually it says “Automatic”. IT has no other function than the status.
5. “Circle, More” button. Correctly labelled if a bit verbose and ambiguous. This opens a dialog that gives more information and allows to customize the currently active program.
6. A text label. This is a description of the currently selected program. When the program is “Automatic” the text reads “Your everyday hearing settings.”
7. “Edge Mode+” button. A correctly labelled button which enables Edge Mode and opens a dialog for more configuration.
8. “Programs” button: correctly labelled button to open a dialog to switch programs.
9. “My Hearing” button. Correctly labelled button which opens a dialog with more information and settings for the connected hearing aids.
10. “Volume Lowest” button. Incorrectly labelled button that adjusts the mic volume. It should be labelled “Mute.” Activating it will change the button name to “Mute” even though this has already occurred and should now be called “Unmute”.
11. Unlabelled slider. This is the current microphone volume, It ranges from 1 to 255, 128 means 50%. VoiceOver reads the big numbers instead of percentages so one must do some math to get an idea of what the setting is.
12. A couple of icons without alternative text and do not seem to have any function at least that VoiceOver can activate.
13. At the bottom are four tabs: Home, Health, Learn, More. These are accessible.

The tricky part about reviewing settings in the app while VoiceOver is speaking through streaming is that the app will show settings for the streaming. For example, the volume slider on the Home screen will show the level of the microphones as set while streaming, not what they’re set to in the main active program. And likewise adjusting it with the slider will adjust the stream settings not the active program that is not part of streaming.
There are two primary solutions for this. The speech output solution is to set VoiceOver to not do audio streaming. To do this temporarily: Open Control Center and look for the audio control. If VoiceOver is currently streaming it will uusually be called "mFI Hearing Aids.” Open this and select a different sound output such as “iPhone.” The second way is to use a Braille display and mute VoiceOver speech.
Hint: if your Control Center and playback devices menus are as cluttered and require as many swipes as mine do it may be helpful to set up “Change playback destination” shortcuts via the Shortcuts app and place buttons on your home screen or invoke them via Siri. Doing this is outside the scope of this post but Google can help easily.

Selection dialogs. There are a couple of areas in the app that show dialogs to make a further choice. They are individual choices and should be radio buttons but in this case they do not tell VoiceOver which is selected. The two most prominent areas to know are the dialog for Edge Mode+ and the configuration of streaming found in My Hearing > My Settings > Audio Streaming. For example, “Phone Call Audio.” These dialogs allow to make a specific setting adjustment. Tapping the label, for example, “bass boost” does select it but VoiceOver is not notified. The key to know is once you’ve made a selection going back a screen the label is updated with the current selection, for instance, “media audio: Bass boost.” Note there is a selection graphic floating around in these dialogs but I have found it is inconsistently positioned and sometimes does not update so it is better to check the labels. A second note in the case of Edge Mode once enabled return to the Home screen and look for its descriptive label.

Options

Comments

By Scott Davert on Sunday, July 23, 2023 - 09:45

Member of the AppleVis Editorial Team

First, thank you Travis for writing out your experience! I have sent this page to a friend who is both a VoiceOver user and a Starkey HA owner.
Isn't it sad that you can pay several thousand dollars for a set of hearing aids which you have to be very tech savvy to jump through the accessibility hoops that they clearly don't care have to be jumped through? Yeah, I know, capitalism and all that, but the end message they are very clearly sending blind consumers is that they are ok discriminating against us. We're not worthy of an equal customer experience that their sighted customers get. Shouldn't they give us a discount since they are cutting off some features for blind users? This is not simply a question for Starkey, it's a general sentiment I feel toward all of the companies other than Phonak. They have sent the message that they do care about their blind hearing aid wearers just as much as those who are sighted. PR in these companies is clearly in the toilet.
Again, thank you very much for sharing all of the info that you have. I have no doubt VO users of their product will benefit!

By Travis Roth on Sunday, July 23, 2023 - 09:45

Hi Scott, I feel your pain! I am most disappointed that the equalizers are not accessible, given the other things that these hearing aids do I feel that possibly has some potential. But alas.

I should mention that the My Starkey app also has remote telecare where the audiologist can do programming remotely. I didn't review this as I've not had occasion to use it with my audiologist yet. I can say the initial setup process to establish a link to the audiologist which involves entering a code your given from the audiologist is accessible enough to do. Beyond that though I'm not sure. If anyone tries it before I do I hope they can post here.

By Cordelia on Sunday, July 23, 2023 - 09:45

I agree with you 100%. I have a similar experience with the app aimed at supporting hearing aids made by Oticon. I have asked my audiologist to bring this up with the manufacturer (he knows my needs very well and has been a staunch advocate for clients with similar issues), and I also called Oticon myself repeatedly to say that they need to make their hardware and software more readily accessible for blind hearin-impaired users. I got a polite "Yes, thank you, we will work on it." And what has happened? Nothing. Very disappointing. -- Please pardon me for griping, which is neither productive nor helpful.