It is a generic term indicating a hearing disability, which may range in severity from mild to profound; it includes the subsets of deaf and hard of hearing. Hearing impairment is “an impairment in hearing, whether permanent or fluctuating, that adversely affects a child’s educational performance.”
Deafness is defined as “a hearing impairment that is so severe that the child is impaired in processing linguistic information through hearing, with or without amplification.” Thus, deafness is viewed as a condition that prevents an individual from receiving sound in all or most of its forms. In contrast, a child with a hearing loss can generally respond to auditory stimuli, including speech.
Deaf: The child who is born with little or no hearing or who has suffered the loss early in infancy before speech and language patterns are acquired is said to be deaf (pre-lingual deafness). Deaf ness is defined to those for whom the sense of hearing is nonfunctional for the ordinary purposes of life. According to Federal definition “deafness is a hearing loss that adversely affects educational performance in processing linguistic information through hearing with or without amplification”.
Deafened: One who is born with normal hearing and reaches the age where he can produce and comprehend speech but subsequently loses his hearing is described as deafened.
Hard of hearing: Of those with reduced hearing acuity either since birth or acquired at anytime during life.Hard of hearing individuals are those in whom the sense of hearing, although defective is functional either with or without hearing aid.
Mild hearing loss:Combination of sensory and conductive hearing loss with damage to the ear and bone conduction pathways, even though the latter may be the better of the two.
