Supporting Hearing Impairment

Information for people who are Hearing Impaired

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Who can get a hearing impairment?

Anyone of any age. Newborn babies can fail their hearing test and need to receive appropriate specialist support. Some children born hearing, can lose it later on. Some people lose their hearing completely overnight while others may have good hearing into advanced old age.

You probably meet and talk to someone with a hearing impairment every day. It is estimated that 1 in 7 of the total UK population have a significant hearing loss, this includes 9 out of 10 older people. So if you have a hearing loss, you are not alone.

Those people who have had a gradual hearing loss may have developed ways of compensating for this, such as lip-reading. This helps whatever hearing is left, but sometimes we need extra help to cope within a hearing world.

Anyone with a hearing loss can easily feel isolated and left out. Family gatherings where people chatter and laugh together can be stressful and upsetting when you can’t hear what’s being said. Background noise in pubs, restaurants and crowded places makes joining in very difficult and often impossible. Noisy work places, staff meetings and employers and colleagues with little or no understanding of deafness add to the frustrations and disadvantages of those with poor hearing.

It can be one of many reasons. It could be because of genetic inheritance - if a great grand-parent, grand-parent or parent have had a hearing impairment, you may be more likely to have a hearing impairment yourself, depending on the particular cause or condition. Some people expose their ears to repeated loud noise. People who have been exposed to very loud machinery at work or those who served in the Forces many years ago were deafened by explosions, artillery, torpedo firing or long hours enclosed in tanks, etc. Sometimes hearing loss is caused by disease (e.g. measles, mumps, meningitis etc.) as a side effect of medication or by your mother having rubella (German Measles) in pregnancy.  However for most people it is simply part of the ageing process.

Hearing loss can occur through a variety of ear conditions or by accident/trauma, and is described as mild, moderate, severe or profound. People with mild loss have some difficulty hearing speech in noisy situations. With moderate loss, they may have difficulty following speech in ordinary situations without the use of a hearing aid, and considerable problems in noisy areas. Usually they can use a telephone if they are wearing a hearing aid by using the T switch (this will cut down the background noise). Severe hearing loss makes speech difficult to follow, even with a hearing aid and people with profound loss may have no use or benefit from a hearing aid. They may use a text phone (minicom) and if deaf from early childhood, are likely to use sign language and/or lip-read.