AT for Hearing Impairments

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Like with visual impairment and blindness, hearing loss and deafness is a continuum and can begin at any point in the life cycle. Depending upon which definitions are used, approximately 9,000,000 people in the United States are deaf or hard of hearing according to research provided by Gallaudet University. People are more likely to face hearing impairment as they age.

Because there is so much variety in this population, assistive technologies are once again quite varied.  Where a person who is born Deaf may well have American Sign Language (ASL) or another sign language as their primary and preferred language, someone else who faces profound hearing loss later in life may never learn ASL at all, even though they may end up with a similar hearing impairment. In fact, a hint at the difference comes from the way the word “deaf” is used. There are some people who see hearing loss as a cultural state and not an impairment. For this population, it is typical to see the word “Deaf” capitalized.  For others, hearing loss describes a sensory state, and for this group, the word “deaf” is not capitalized. This relationship to personal hearing loss also impacts AT preferences and use.

Common assistive technologies for people with hearing loss include:

  • Hearing aids to amplify sound
  • Cochlear implants
  • Captions and transcription
  • Human note takers
  • Caption phones
  • Video calling
  • Visual alert systems
  • Assistive listening systems such as induction loops, FM systems, and infrared systems
  • Human interpreters

With the increase on accessibility in the last few years, captions have become a common concern. Many people who generate their own captions (either from transcripts, completely by hand, or by editing machine-generated captions) ask the question, “how accurate do my captions need to be?” The answer is that captions should be as accurate as possible with correct spelling, punctuation, and capitalization. While some people with hearing impairments do not value capitalization necessarily, captions are useful for many populations and support people with hearing impairments as well as others. Accuracy in captions is very important.