Lesson 4Web accessibility for hearing impaired users
- Notion 22 - What are hearing impairments and who do they impact on the web?
- Notion 23 - Accessibility issues hearing impaired users can experience
- Notion 24 - Tools you can use to ensure your content is accessible for hearing impaired users
- Notion 25 - Design tips for ensuring content is accessible for hearing impaired users
- Notion 26 - Examples of design that is inaccessible for hearing impaired users
- Notion 27 - What makes these websites accessible for hearing impaired users?
- Notion 28 - Wrap up: What does hearing impairment mean?
Notion 22
What are hearing impairments and who do they impact on the web?
Target skills
There are 34.4 million adults in the EU with a disabling hearing loss. By 2050 nearly 2.5 billion people are projected to have some degree of hearing loss worldwide.
Causes
Hearing loss is defined as the condition in which a person is not able to hear as well as someone with normal hearing. Hearing loss may be mild, moderate, severe, or profound. It can affect one ear or both ears and leads to difficulty in hearing conversational speech or loud sounds.
'Hard of hearing' refers to people with hearing loss ranging from mild to severe. People who are hard of hearing usually communicate through spoken language and/or sign language and can benefit from hearing aids, cochlear implants, and other assistive devices as well as captioning.
'Deaf' people mostly have profound hearing loss, which implies very little or no hearing. They often use sign language for communication.
Causes of hearing loss and deafness
Pre/perinatal period and childhood
- Genetic factors - Include non/hereditary hearing loss
- Intrauterine infections
- Prenatal conditions
- Meningitis and other infections
Adulthood or during life span
- Trauma/Loud noise to the ear or head
- Smoking
- Cerumen impaction
- Viral infections and other ear conditions
- chronical/sudden neurosensorial deseases/disorders
The impact of unaddressed hearing loss
When unaddressed, hearing loss impacts many aspects of life at individual level:
- Communication and speech
- Cognition
- Education and Employment
- Social isolation, loneliness and stigma
The correct use of terms:
When refering to a deaf person, the correct way to write it should be d/Deaf, since we refer to deaf people when fereing to their condition, and Deaf when we refer to the community they belong to.