This take on #a11y completely overlooks the havoc that the loss of the headphone jack has wrought on people with hearing loss. The 3.5 mm audio cable is the one single unifying standard that we have for putting together all the different components of assistive listening tech. 1/
Wireless connectivity for hearing assistive tech is a complete and utter mess. There's made-for-iPhone that doesn't work with anything except Apple's products and a select line of hearing devices, including one brand of cochlear implants. 2/
There's Google's ASHA, which has similar drawbacks as Apple's solution, except that it's supported by even fewer hearing devices. There's Phonak's bend-backward Bluetooth standard connectivity, which is eminently unsuitable for realtime applications, due to the BT lag. 3/
All this completely leaves aside how we connect microphones, loops (there is no comparable 1-to-many alternative), ALDs, CART audio, ASR input, and speakers together. There's only one way - you guessed it: 3.5 mm audio and its 1/4" cousin. 4/
In short, eliminating cables has solved one accessibility problem and created an accessibility mess elsewhere that impacts a heckuva lot of people. @blakereid /5
