Can I H ear You Now?

1. Can I Hear You Now? By: Emily de Reyna

2. Information About Me • Unilateral Sensorineural Hearing Loss • Sensorineural is damage to the inner ear (cochlear) or the nerve path ways from the inner ear to the brain • Congenital (existed at birth) • My Hearing Loss • located in my right ear • Range: moderately-severe sloping to severe • Diagnosed at 4 ½ years old

3. What is Hearing Loss? • It is a decrease in someone’s ability to hear • The range can go from mild to profound • Hearing loss can effect people of any age • Hearing loss is more commonly found in elderly people • Between 30 - 50 million people in the United States suffer from some degree of hearing loss. • As people live longer, due to the advancement of medicine and technology, the number of people suffering from Hearing Loss has been increasing

5. Different types of Hearing Loss • Conductive Hearing Loss • Hearing loss is due to problems with the ear canal, ear drum, or middle ear and its little bones (the malleus, incus, and stapes). • Most Can hear and understand some sound and speech with some difficulty in a noisy environment • Some sounds are not always loud enough to hear Sensorineural Hearing Loss • Located in the Inner Ear, Auditory Nerve, or the Brain • Ranges from mild to profound • Even worse with background noise • May be helped with hearing aids, if loss is not that bad • Can often be helped by Cochlear Implants

6. Different Degrees of Hearing Loss • Normal Hearing Loss Has little effect on hearing sounds • Mild Hearing Loss Difficulty with quiet voices • Moderate Hearing Loss Difficulty with many voices • Moderate/Severe Hearing Loss Difficulty with most voices • Severe Hearing Loss Cannot hear without hearing aids • Profound Hearing Loss Hearing aids do not help much

8. Unilateral Hearing Loss Unilateral Hearing Loss (Single-Sided Hearing Loss) • Trouble locating where sounds are coming from • Harder to understand group conversations; with or without background noise • Prefer people to sit on the side of the “good” ear • Can improve with the help of a hearing aid

9. Cochlear Implants • Used for people with Severe to Profoundly deaf • Surgically inserted in the cochlear, with the microphone and processor behind the ear. • Does not restore to normal hearing • Helps person to understand speech and environmental sounds

10. Types of Hearing Aids

11. Assistive Learning Systems • FM Systems • A direct teacher to child hearing system • In a noisy classroom, gives the child direct input to the teacher’s voice • The teacher wears a microphone that transmits to the child’s hearing aid through radio waves • Student can hear teacher above background noise • The student might wear a personal hearing aid in one ear and an FM hearing aid that is connected to the teacher’s microphone in the other.

12. Tips to Help Students • Write important information on the board • Seat student in front of class • Arrange for class notes to be given before the lecture • Use of FM System if it is recommended

13. Tips to help Students • Face the student while talking clearly • Student will look for: • Lip Movement • Gestures and Facial Expressions • Repeat and Rephrase Important Information • Use Visual Aids to help explain the information more clearly

14. Tips to Help Students • Make sure there is closed captioning for any audio segments • Understand Concerns of the Student • Help and Support them in anything they want to achieve • Encourage student to use their services

15. Common Misconceptions • People know when they don’t hear something • Background noise shouldn’t bother someone that is hearing impaired • Hearing Impaired students shouldn’t necessarily tire more easily than normal hearing students • Position in the classroom does not matter • An FM System is not necessary