Ear With Hearing Aid Emoji

A human ear with a small hearing aid fitted behind it. 🦻 is one of the accessibility emojis added in Unicode 12.0 (2019), proposed by Apple alongside 🧏, 🦮 (guide dog), 🦯 (white cane), 🦼 and 🦽 (wheelchairs), and 🦾 and 🦿 (prosthetic arm and leg). It shipped with the first emoji set ever designed specifically for disability representation.

The design shows what's called a behind-the-ear (BTE) or receiver-in-canal (RIC) hearing aid, the most common style worldwide. It covers hearing-aid users, cochlear implant recipients (by extension), and anyone advocating for hearing accessibility. Unlike the plain ear emoji (👂), which is body part or "I'm listening," 🦻 specifically signals assistive tech.

It's also the quietest emoji in the 2019 accessibility set. Google Trends data shows 🦻 has sat at a search interest of 1 to 2 since launch, while its sibling 🧏 spiked 6x in 2024 thanks to the mewing meme. That's a feature, not a bug. 🦻 is used by the people it's for, not by a meme.

🦻 shows up in four recurring places. First, on World Hearing Day (March 3), when the WHO, audiology clinics, and hearing-aid manufacturers flood social media with awareness posts. The 2025 theme was "Changing mindsets: Empower yourself to make ear and hearing care a reality for all." Second, in bios of Deaf and hard-of-hearing creators who want to signal hearing-aid use specifically, not just Deafness. Third, in accessibility advocacy, usually alongside ♿, 🧏, and 🦮. Fourth, in the September 2024 news cycle around Apple AirPods Pro 2 becoming the first FDA-authorized OTC hearing aid. The emoji did real work as the visual shorthand for that story.

Some users reach for 🦻 to mean "I'm listening carefully." That's technically fine but tends to step on the emoji's intended meaning, since 👂 already fills that role. Audiologists and hearing-aid brands have occasionally pushed back on this appropriation for the same reasons the Deaf community pushes back on 🧏🤫.

🦻 was one of the original 13 emoji concepts in Apple's 2018 Proposal for New Accessibility Emoji (L2/18-080). Apple categorized the proposal by disability domain: Blind and Low Vision, Deaf and Hard of Hearing, Physical Motor, and Hidden Disabilities. 🦻 landed in the second category alongside 🧏.

The collaboration with the National Association of the Deaf shaped the design details. Apple picked a behind-the-ear / receiver-in-canal shape because it's globally the most common hearing-aid style and the one most users would recognize. An earlier draft showed an in-canal (CIC) aid, but that form is harder to read at small sizes, so it was scrapped. The cord-and-receiver detail makes 🦻 legible even at thumbnail size.

Time framed the accessibility set as a milestone when it covered the filing. Unicode 12.0 approved the set in 2019 and vendors shipped within 6 to 9 months, unusually fast.

The deeper origin story of hearing aids themselves stretches further back. The first electric hearing aid, the Akouphone, was invented in 1898 by Miller Reese Hutchison, an Alabama inventor trying to help his friend Lyman Gould, who was deaf from childhood scarlet fever. It was a carbon-transmitter device. Hutchison later refined it into the Acousticon (1902), the first commercial portable hearing aid. From that table-sized device to a 2019 emoji took exactly 121 years.

Approved in Unicode 12.0 / Emoji 12.0 (2019) at codepoint U+1F9BBU+1F9BB. CLDR short name: ear_with_hearing_aidear_with_hearing_aid. Supports the full set of Fitzpatrick skin tone modifiers (U+1F9BB + toneU+1F9BB + tone). No gender variants (it's an ear, not a person). Shipped to Apple platforms in iOS 13.2 (October 2019), Google Noto in Android 10, Samsung in One UI 2.5, and Microsoft in Windows 10 May 2019 Update. All major vendors render it as a behind-the-ear style hearing aid, though the exact curve and cable vary.

1. 1898Miller Reese Hutchison invents the Akouphone, the first electric hearing aid, in Alabama↗
2. 1902Hutchison refines the Akouphone into the portable Acousticon, the first commercially viable hearing aid
3. 2018Apple files L2/18-080 accessibility emoji proposal with 🦻 in the Deaf/HoH category, co-signed by NAD, ACB, CPF↗
4. 2019Unicode 12.0 approves 🦻 and ships it alongside 🧏, 🦮, 🦼, 🦽, 🦾, 🦿↗
5. 2019Apple rolls out the accessibility emojis in iOS 13.2 (September)↗
6. 2022FDA establishes the OTC hearing aid category, letting adults buy mild-to-moderate hearing aids without a prescription
7. 2024FDA authorizes AirPods Pro 2 as the first OTC hearing aid software, at $249 vs. $4000+ for traditional devices↗

How 🦻 reads depends heavily on how hearing loss is framed locally. In the U.S. and UK, hearing aids still carry a stigma linked to aging, which is part of why adoption is low: only about 1 in 6 Americans aged 20 to 69 with measured hearing loss actually uses hearing aids. The WHO estimates less than 20% of people worldwide who would benefit from hearing aids receive them.

In parts of East Asia, where glasses are fashion-coded, hearing aids are increasingly being framed the same way, especially with the shift toward hearables like the AirPods Pro 2. In much of Africa and South Asia, cost is the gatekeeper, and WHO lists access to devices as a public-health priority. Among the Deaf community (capital-D, culturally), 🦻 carries a different weight: some Deaf creators don't use it because they don't use hearing aids and don't want to be read through a hearing-culture lens. That's a nuance worth knowing before you assume 🧏 and 🦻 always belong together.

• •The first electric hearing aid, the Akouphone, was invented by Miller Reese Hutchison in 1898, a student at Alabama Medical College who wanted to help his childhood friend Lyman Gould hear again. From Akouphone to emoji took exactly 121 years.
• •The WHO reports that 1.5 billion people live with some hearing loss, 430 million with disabling loss, and by 2050 the disabling-loss number will exceed 700 million. Unaddressed hearing loss costs the global economy about US$980 billion a year.
• •Only about 1 in 6 Americans aged 20 to 69 with measured hearing loss actually use hearing aids. The WHO estimates fewer than 20% of people globally who would benefit from aids actually receive them. Cost and stigma are the two main reasons.
• •AirPods Pro 2 with the hearing aid feature cost $249. Traditional prescription hearing aids average $4,000 to $6,000 per pair. That's roughly 20x cheaper, one of the sharpest price drops in medical-device history.
• •🦻 search interest on Google Trends has sat at 1 to 2 every quarter since 2020, except for an occasional tick to 2 during World Hearing Day weeks. That makes it one of the most stable emojis in the entire Unicode 12.0 set.
• •Apple's 2018 proposal originally showed a completely-in-canal (CIC) hearing aid, but the design was changed to behind-the-ear / receiver-in-canal because the CIC style was illegible at emoji sizes.

• •Many users read 🦻 as a generic "I'm listening" emoji. That's close to 👂's territory and tends to step on 🦻's intended meaning as a hearing-aid / accessibility marker.
• •Some people assume 🦻 covers cochlear implants too. Visually it doesn't: cochlear implants have a magnet that sits on the scalp above the ear. No emoji covers cochlear implants specifically yet.
• •A fraction of users confuse 🦻 with in-ear monitors (the earpieces performers wear live). That usage exists but is rare.

• •Time's 2018 coverage of Apple's accessibility emoji proposal framed 🦻 as part of the first formal Unicode push for disability representation.
• •Nyle DiMarco's Netflix series Deaf U and the CODA Oscar win helped normalize discussion of assistive hearing tech alongside Deaf cultural identity.
• •The September 2024 AirPods Pro 2 FDA hearing-aid authorization dominated tech and health media for weeks, making 🦻 the de facto headline emoji for a period.
• •World Hearing Day campaigns from WHO, ASHA, and RNID use 🦻 every March 3 as the recognized emoji for the event.

• •Base codepoint: U+1F9BBU+1F9BB (Ear with Hearing Aid). Part of Unicode 12.0 (2019).
• •Skin tone modifiers: U+1F9BB + U+1F3FB..U+1F3FFU+1F9BB + U+1F3FB..U+1F3FF for the five Fitzpatrick tones. No gender variants.
• •Shortcode: :ear_with_hearing_aid::ear_with_hearing_aid: on GitHub, Slack, Discord. CLDR: ear_with_hearing_aidear_with_hearing_aid.
• •Supports Emoji 12.0. If your platform supports 🧏 it should support 🦻 too.
• •Screen readers announce this as "ear with hearing aid." That's accurate and descriptive, so don't override it with aria-label unless you really need to.

See the full Emoji Developer Tools guide for regex patterns, encoding helpers, and more.