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What is a hearing impairment?
Hearing impaired refers to people with a hearing loss of disorder of the ear (such as Tinnitus or Menieres) who communicate predominantly orally.
A person who has a hearing loss may:
Be profoundly deaf
A person is profoundly deaf when they cannot hear speech clearly even with the use of hearing aids. Because speech and language are mostly learned from hearing others speak, people who are profoundly deaf mostly use sign language and finger spelling as their primary way of communicating. As a result, “the deaf community”, or people who have been profoundly deaf since birth, see themselves as a language group rather than a disability group. English is often their second language (Branson and Miller, 1991, p.1). Education within a special education facility is one of the options for a child who is deaf or has a profound hearing impairment.
Have a severe hearing loss
While people who have a severe hearing loss are still able to hear loud noises such as sirens and aeroplanes, they will hear a loud voice at about 30 centimetres and moderate voices several centimetres from the ear. For a child born with a severe hearing loss, speech and language are not learned without early amplification.
Have a moderate loss
For people who have a moderate hearing loss, conversational speech must be loud and articulate to be understood. They may have affected speech where some words are not pronounced clearly.
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