people with hearing loss and oral communication

back to "New to Hearing Loss"

The most important direct effect of hearing loss is increased difficulty with oral communication. This difficulty pervades the life of hard of hearing, late deafened, and oral deaf people, because so much of what we do on a daily basis involves face-to-face communication.

Many hard of hearing, late deafened, and oral deaf people avoid situations that require them to understand spoken communication. This can include everything from taking classes to social interactions to certain aspects of employment. They may become increasingly isolated as they drop more and more previously enjoyable activities.

We encourage you to continue reading for a thorough treatment of oral communication involving a person with hearing loss. But if you're short of time or you're looking a one page "handout" to give to people. Please visit out "Tips for the Hearing Person" and "Tips for the Person with Hearing Loss".

Factors that affect the success of face-to-face communication include the environment in which communication is attempted and characteristics of both the speaker and listener. The willingness of both parties to mitigate these factors can greatly improve the effectiveness of communications.

In addition to optimizing the communications factors, a person with hearing loss can adopt a variety of communications strategies to maintain communications. Options include speech reading, cued speech, and sign language.

Finally, when the application of strategies and controlling of factors does not yield a successful conclusion, the person with hearing loss may adopt one of several expedients to get through the situation. These include repetition, writing, and <gasp> bluffing.