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Legal Definition of Hearing Impaired

By the laws of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), an impairment that can be considered a disability is one that limits a major life activity, or substantially limited major life activity in the past. There are different levels of hearing impairment: a mild hearing loss, mild-to-moderate hearing loss, moderate-to-severe hearing loss, and deafness.

  1. Features

    • Hearing impairment is the limited ability to detect, differentiate, or process sound. The severity of a hearing loss is determined by an audiologist after he conducts a hearing test on a patient. The test includes but is not limited to the patient responding to a series of beeps, repeating words, and listening to words with excess background noise. A speech impediment, garbled speech, or a severe lisp are all signs of possible hearing loss.

    Definitions

    • According to USLegal Definitions, a hearing impairment is a full or partial decrease in the ability to detect or understand sounds. It can range from a mild hearing loss to total deafness. The U.S. Census Bureau uses the ADA's definition of impairment and expands upon it to say a person is hearing impaired if he or she is over 16 years old and has difficulty performing one or more functional activities, including hearing or speaking.

    Significance

    • In accordance with hear-it.org, hearing impairment affects over 31 million Americans--about 10 percent of the population. Of the hearing-impaired population, only about 23 percent actually use a hearing aid.

    Considerations

    • It can be difficult to tell if someone is hearing impaired; it is often referred to as "the invisible disability." Hearing aids are sometimes impossible to see, and if the hearing-impaired person does not have a speech impediment, it can be easy to forget that he is impaired.

    Famous Ties

    • Helen Keller was the first deaf and blind person to graduate from college and was also a world-famous speaker and author. Ludwig Van Beethoven became completely deaf, but managed to play music and succeed as one of the greatest musicians and composers in history.

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