Renowned audiologist Dr DOUGLAS BECK has spent more than four decades helping people hear better using cochlear implants and prescription hearing aids. He is now appealing to practitioners and consumers to try a new option: Nuance Audio Glasses.
Over-the-counter (OTC) hearing technology and wearable hearing products are not a threat to audiology, but an opportunity for hearing professionals to reach millions of people with untreated mild to moderate hearing loss in the USA, and Australia, who would otherwise not visit a hearing care professional.
That’s the view of US-based audiologist, clinician, scientist, author and researcher, Dr Douglas Beck, who, as EssilorLuxottica’s senior director of audiology professional affairs, is part of the team rolling out Nuance Audio Glasses here and abroad.
The revolutionary technology fits into the OTC hearing aid category and – after being listed on the Australian Register of Therapeutic Goods in August 2025 – is available through optometry and audiology practices, helping them bridge an important gap in modern hearing care.
Speaking to audiologists during a dinner presentation while in Australia to present at the Australasian College of Audiology (ACAud. inc. HAASA) Congress in April 2026, Dr Beck said he believed the hearing care profession was at a turning point and practitioners “need to meet patients where they are and offer them desirable solutions.”
“Everything depends on the patient – their education, their finances, their difficulties hearing and understanding in noisy environments, and most importantly, their motivation and their goals,” he said.
“Research shows these factors are a huge part of determining their success.
“Most of the time, the primary problem which brings them into the clinic is difficulty understanding speech in noise (i.e., restaurants, cocktail parties, family gatherings, etc) and simply making things louder will not solve that.”
However, a large part of the solution lies in improving the signal-to-noise ratio, he said. “Specifically, the goal is to make the signal-of-interest (the person one wishes to pay attention to) substantially louder than the background noise. Some noteworthy OTC products do that very well,” Dr Beck said.
YOUNGER OTC BUYERS
One study from 2025 found many buyers of OTC hearing aids were eight to 10 years younger than buyers of prescription hearing aids, he added. This was an important finding because it was easier and more efficient to avoid problems, rather than trying to fix them, he said.
“For example, when a person has a significant untreated hearing loss for many years, they are more likely to experience social isolation, anxiety, depression, communication difficulties, and other secondary, yet very important problems, partially due to hearing and listening difficulties,” he said.
“However, if their hearing and listening problems are diagnosed and treated earlier, they may avoid the long-term negative consequences associated with untreated hearing loss.”
Dr Beck reported that people often waited five to 10 years from the time they realised there was a problem until they did something about it.
“It’s a bigger problem than many realise because well-intentioned health care providers often say things like, “Get a hearing screening” which is unfortunate, because the most common problem is understanding speech-in-noise, and that simply does not show up on a hearing screening!” he said.
He recommended that each patient – a child, adult or senior – should have a comprehensive audiometric evaluation which included listening and communication assessment, speech-in-noise assessment, extended high frequency audiometric analysis (80+% of speech intelligibility originates in the high frequencies) and otoacoustic emissions. All of these yielded a significantly more accurate diagnosis than a simple beep-tone based hearing screening, he said.
Additionally, Dr Beck noted that many well-intentioned health care professionals told consumers and patients that their hearing loss was “normal for their age.”
“However, there is no normal hearing loss,” he said. “Hearing loss is common, it is normal.”
Dr Beck said an individual would never be told “your lower back pain is normal for your age” or “your high blood pressure is normal for your age” or even “your diabetes is normal for your age”.
“These things are common, they are not normal, and each of them needs to be addressed to maximise your health care and your quality of life,” he said.
HEARING AID STIGMA
A major theme of the presentation was the significant impact of stigma surrounding hearing aids.
“Most people do not want to wear them,” Dr Beck said. “Some 80-85% of people with hearing loss will never get a diagnosis or wear hearing aids simply because people do not want to be seen wearing hearing aids.
“It is a shame, it is unfortunate, and it shouldn’t be that cosmetic issues drive healthcare decisions, but that is the situation.
“Fortunately, Nuance Audio Glasses not only offer a significant improvement in signal-to-noise ratio for challenging listening situations, but they do so while hiding the hearing aid technology in a fashionable pair of glasses, with nothing in the ear of the wearer.”
Dr Beck said stigma was incredibly important, and cited research showing many adults avoided hearing aids because they feared looking older or less capable.
“When people see hearing aids, they often associate them with age, reduced cognitive ability and disability. That is inappropriate and awful but remains the status quo,” he said.
“As there is no stigma associated with Nuance Audio Glasses, more people may be willing to try them, representing a win-win for all concerned.”
Research showed about 73 million Americans have hearing loss and another 26 million have difficulty understanding speech in noise, despite “normal” audiograms. (Beck & Danhauer, 2019).
As one of the world’s most published audiologists, Dr Beck said hearing care should not focus solely on devices, but on improving communication and listening. “Hearing is simply perceiving sound,” he said. “Listening is the ability to comprehend or make sense out of sound.”
Most people with hearing loss could “hear,” he said.
“They generally do not come into the audiology clinic stating they cannot hear,” Dr Beck said. “They usually say they cannot understand speech in a noisy situation, or they blame people for mumbling, which may be a good observation, but is a faulty diagnosis.
“Most often others are not actually mumbling – the issue is usually that the observer has an undiagnosed high frequency hearing loss. Further, the hearing versus listening dilemma is how so many people trick themselves into thinking their hearing is just fine, when it is not.”
People cannot self-assess many important aspects of hearing or listening problems, he added
COGNITIVE DECLINE
Discussing cognitive decline and hearing loss, Dr Beck said there was no evidence that age-related hearing loss caused cognitive decline in the general population.
“What we can say is that for people who are at risk for cognitive decline, such as older people, people with more significant hearing loss, those with co-morbidities such as heart disease, diabetes, and more, or people with poly-pharmacy issues, untreated hearing loss may exacerbate cognitive decline in those people, as has been demonstrated in many correlational studies,” he said.
Although exact numbers remained unknown, he said it seemed that 75-80% of people with hearing loss have mild to moderate loss and may benefit from over-the-counter hearing aids.
Discussing the positioning of Nuance Audio Glasses since their market arrival in mid-2025, Dr Beck said they were not intended to replace prescription hearing aids for everyone.
“We cannot fit everyone with Nuance glasses. However, we can fit about 70% of people with mild to moderate loss,” he said.
MOST ARE SATISFIED
Studies showed prescription hearing aids fitted by a practitioner led to an 85% satisfaction rate, and of note, Nuance Audio Glasses scored the same satisfaction rating when dispensed by a professional who calibrated them and paired them to the client’s phone, he added.
Dr Beck, who has noise-induced hearing loss from years as a musician and serving
in the military said: “I’ve been wearing my Nuance Audio Glasses for more than a year.
“For 15 years I wore the best and most technologically advanced hearing aids, they were great and helped a lot, but I haven’t worn them since getting my Nuance Audio Glasses – that’s how much difference they make.
“For those with mild to moderate hearing loss seeking an OTC product that provides benefit for speech in noise, is comfortable and cosmetically pleasing, Nuance Audio Glasses represent an innovative, inexpensive and exciting option”
INDIVIDUAL CALIBRATION
Dr Beck said it took less than two minutes in a quiet room to easily calibrate Nuance Audio Glasses. This maximised their sound quality and beam-forming ability.
“The calibration reduces the loudness of the wearer’s voice and creates a more natural listening experience, and the calibration protocol helps account for each unique head shape and size,” he added.
“Premium prescription hearing aids often improve the signal-to-noise ratio by about 2-3 decibels (dB). Our 2025 paper compared premium devices from the world’s largest hearing manufacturers to Nuance Audio Glasses and we had similar, and sometimes better outcomes.”
Additionally, a soon-to-be published study from Canada’s Western Ontario University found Nuance glasses led to an up to 29% improvement in speech understanding in challenging acoustic environments with significant reductions in listening effort.
“And a study from the National Acoustic Laboratories in Australia found 70% of Nuance Audio Glasses wearers improved their communication ability after just three hours of use – which is phenomenal,” Dr Beck said. “Communication goals were met in 90% of cases and there was a clear user preference for Nuance Audio Glasses in challenging situations.”
Importantly, hearing aid prices in the US appeared to have fallen significantly in recent years, and consumer acceptance of wearable audio technology had exploded.
Use of Apple AirPods, whose models now include hearing aid features, was evidence of willingness to wear hearing-related devices when they perceived them as useful and socially acceptable.
“Apple has sold 750 million AirPods in the last 12 years,” Dr Beck added. “There are many lessons to be learned from that success, not the least of which is that people will wear hearing technology situationally; when they want to, and when they perceive benefit from it.
“The numbers indicate people can pick and choose when they want to wear hearing technology.”
EXTENDING REACH
By improving SNR and helping users focus on speech, Dr Beck believed products such as Nuance Audio Glasses could support people whose biggest difficulty was hearing conversation in challenging listening environments.
“OTC products and Nuance Audio Glasses in particular are reaching people who otherwise would never come to see us,” he said, adding that Nuance Audio Glasses could become an important gateway into hearing care for tens of millions of adults with untreated mild to moderate hearing loss.
“My concern is meeting the patient/consumer where they are, while addressing their needs for a cosmetically pleasing solution that is affordable and that improves their ability to hear and listen in difficult and challenging situations,” he said.
However, he said comprehensive hearing evaluations remained important.
“We recommend a comprehensive hearing health assessment by a licensed hearing care provider for individuals concerned about their hearing health,” Dr Beck said.
“But again, 80-85% of people we say this to aren’t going to do it, so as a professional, the question is, are you going to meet patients where they are and offer a solution they find acceptable, or are we going to do the same thing as we have for decades, and expect a different result?”
*Audiology and optometry stores in Australia and New Zealand can sell Nuance Audio Glasses as over–the–counter devices with no hearing prescription required. Practitioners and clinics interested in the offering can contact the EssilorLuxottica customer care team on 1300 655 612 (AU) or 0800 441 066 (NZ) or email the team at opticalcc@au.luxottica.com.
Click here for information and to find a Nuance Audio Glasses stockist in your area.
