Hard of Hearing - Defined
Disability Defined – Hard of Hearing
The causes and degrees of hearing loss vary across the Deaf and Hard of Hearing community, as do methods of communication and attitudes toward deafness. In general, there are three types of hearing impairment:
1. Conductive loss: affects the sound-conducting paths of the outer and middle ear. The degree of loss can be decreased through
the use of a hearing aid or by surgery. People with conductive loss might speak softly, hear better in noisy surroundings than
people with normal hearing, and experience ringing in their ears.
2. Sensorineural loss: affects the inner ear and the auditory nerve and can range from mild to profound. People with sensorineural
loss might speak loudly, experience greater high-frequency loss, have difficulty distinguishing consonant sounds, and not hear
well in noisy environments.
3. Mixed loss: results from both a conductive and sensorineural loss.
Given the close relationship between oral language and hearing, students with hearing impairments might also have speech impairments. One’s age at the time of the loss determines whether one is prelingually deaf (hearing loss before oral language acquisition) or adventitiously deaf (normal hearing during language acquisition). Those born deaf or who become deaf as very young children might have more limited speech development.
http://sds.ucsf.edu/sites/sds.ucsf.edu/files/PDF/hearing.pdf
The causes and degrees of hearing loss vary across the Deaf and Hard of Hearing community, as do methods of communication and attitudes toward deafness. In general, there are three types of hearing impairment:
1. Conductive loss: affects the sound-conducting paths of the outer and middle ear. The degree of loss can be decreased through
the use of a hearing aid or by surgery. People with conductive loss might speak softly, hear better in noisy surroundings than
people with normal hearing, and experience ringing in their ears.
2. Sensorineural loss: affects the inner ear and the auditory nerve and can range from mild to profound. People with sensorineural
loss might speak loudly, experience greater high-frequency loss, have difficulty distinguishing consonant sounds, and not hear
well in noisy environments.
3. Mixed loss: results from both a conductive and sensorineural loss.
Given the close relationship between oral language and hearing, students with hearing impairments might also have speech impairments. One’s age at the time of the loss determines whether one is prelingually deaf (hearing loss before oral language acquisition) or adventitiously deaf (normal hearing during language acquisition). Those born deaf or who become deaf as very young children might have more limited speech development.
http://sds.ucsf.edu/sites/sds.ucsf.edu/files/PDF/hearing.pdf
