About Deaf, Hard-of-Hearing, and DeafBlind Individuals

Approximately six to eight percent of the American population has some type of hearing loss that affects their ability to hear speech or environmental sounds. A person who is deaf has a hearing loss of such severity that he or she depends primarily upon visual communication such as sign language, lip-reading (also called speech-reading), writing or gestures. A person who is Hard-of-Hearing has a functional hearing loss, but may not depend primarily on visual communication.

The causes and degrees of hearing loss vary across the deaf and Hard-of-Hearing community, as do methods of communication. There are two major types of hearing loss:

1. Conductive loss affects the sound-conducting paths of the outer and middle ear. The degree of loss can be accommodated through the use of a hearing aid or by surgery, but can rarely be corrected completely. People with conductive loss might speak softly, hear better in noisy surroundings than people with normal hearing, and might experience ringing in their ears or difficulties with balance and dizziness.
2. Sensorineural loss affects the inner ear and the auditory nerve and can range from mild to profound. Hearing aids, surgery, and other devices may not be as effective in accommodating this type of hearing loss. People with sensorineural loss might speak loudly, experience greater high-frequency loss, have difficulty distinguishing consonant sounds, and not hear well in noisy environments.

The inability to hear does not affect an individual's native intelligence or the physical ability to produce sounds. However, given the close relationship between oral language and hearing, persons with hearing loss might also have speech impairments. Age at the time of the loss determines whether an individual 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.

Modes of Communication

Not all deaf individuals are fluent users of all communication modes used across the deaf community — just as users of spoken language are not fluent in all oral languages. Some deaf individuals are skilled lip-readers, but many are not. Many speech sounds have identical mouth movements, which can make lip-reading particularly difficult. For example, "p," "b," and "m" look exactly alike on the lips, and many sounds such as vowels are produced without using clearly differentiated lip movements.

Many deaf individuals use sign language, but there are several types of sign language systems:

• American Sign Language (ASL) is a natural, visual language having its own syntax and grammatical structure which closely resembles French.
• Pidgin Sign English (PSE), also known as "Contact Signing," combines aspects of ASL and English and is used in educational situations.

People who use ASL often identify as culturally Deaf (with a capital "D") to indicate that ASL (not a spoken language) is their first language and they identify as members of the Deaf community, with its own cultural norms, art, history, humor, etc. These individuals may also have difficulty with reading and writing English, because it is not their native language. Their grammar and literacy will be that of a student learning English as a second language.

Accommodations for Deaf, Hard-of-Hearing, and DeafBlind Students

Reasonable accommodations are individualized and flexible, based on the nature of the disability and the academic environment. Here is a partial list of common academic accommodations that have been used in the past by deaf, hard-of-hearing, or DeafBlind students. Please contact your disability specialist if you would like to learn more about any of these accommodations.

Classroom accommodations

• Sign language and oral interpreting
• Real-time captioning (C-Print)
• Peer note-taking
• Closed captioning
• Assistive listening devices (ALD)
• Preferred seating
• Lighting
• Background noise reduction

Examination accommodations

• Sign language and oral interpreting
• Alternative test format: “oral” vs. written
• Scribe (for DeafBlind students)

Course preparation

• Early registration
• Advance copy of syllabus or reading list
• Computer lab with adaptive equipment and closed-caption television (CCTV)

Housing

• Fire/smoke alarms with signaling devices
• Door signaling devices
• Accessible telephone (TTY), volume-control phone, or other phone equipment

Campus and community

• Location of accessible (TTY) telephones
• DeafBlind orientation to campus or classrooms
• Paratransit services
• Accommodations for extracurricular activities, such as clubs, study abroad, and sports
• Accommodations for student employment

Selected resources for Deaf, Hard-of-Hearing, and DeafBlind Students

For additional resources, including off-campus interpreting and real-time captioning agencies, please contact your disability specialist.

University of Minnesota campus resources