A 12-gram brooch captures sound and beams it to the ear, sidestepping the muffling effect that standard hearing aids suffer under a hijab.
The hijab is part of daily life and an expression of faith for millions of women in Indonesia. Hearing aids, however, were not designed with that reality in mind. According to Dentsu Indonesia, devices worn beneath the fabric can muffle warning sounds by up to 15 dB, raising the risk of accidents in busy urban environments by as much as 60%. The fabric also dampens conversations, leaving wearers struggling to follow the people around them. Hear in Hijab, developed by Dentsu Indonesia and halal beauty brand Wardah, moves the microphone out from under the cloth.
The hardware sits outside the hijab as a 12-gram brooch pin. It captures sound without obstruction and wirelessly transmits it to a small in-ear receiver, leaving the wearer's head covering intact and the technology disguised as an accessory. First units reached selected users in October 2025, with a second rollout phase now underway to reach more hijab-wearing women across the country, as reported by Little Black Book.
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Accessibility design has long been treated as a universal problem with universal solutions, which usually means solutions shaped by the bodies, clothing and routines of a Western default user. Hear in Hijab is a useful reminder that "inclusive" and "standardized" are not the same thing. Around 1.8 billion people worldwide are Muslim, and a significant share of the women among them cover their hair daily. That hearing aids have overlooked the acoustic consequences of that practice points to how much room remains for products to be designed for and from the realities of specific lives.
The brooch format also nudges the conversation about assistive tech. Rather than making the device smaller and more hidden, Wardah made it visible and wearable as jewelry, treating sound capture as something one might style rather than camouflage.