Hearing Impaired

"Deafness is one of the most invisible of disabilities", TV Historian, David Starkey

Deaf learners and literacy and numeracy difficulties
Because deaf children are expected to start to learn to read English before they have fully mastered the spoken
language, their writing is usually punctuated with many grammatical errors.

It is important to remember that deaf school leavers also typically have a much smaller vocabulary than their
hearing peers . Their lack of a well-developed language with which to learn, plus the fact that they often do not
use the same language at school and at home, means that many deaf youth have an inferior general
knowledge. They are not able to absorb background information by listening to family members or the
television. This lack of knowledge of the world means that they come to literacy and numeracy tasks with a
weaker ability to predict.

Hearing impairment is generally classified into three groups: hard of hearing, deaf and deafened people
(Excellence Gateway).

People who have been deaf or hard of hearing from a young age are most likely to have difficulty with reading English. The degree of deafness may not be as significant in predicting success with reading as other factors, such as family background (Powers et al., 1998).

People who have been hard of hearing from a young age may show some differences from standard English in their writing, for example omitting sounds they cannot hear like -s or -ed on the ends of words.

People who have been deaf from a young age are likely to have writing that uses a small English vocabulary with unusual grammatical errors.

People who have been deafened in later childhood often have some difficulties with literacy and numeracy, but these are likely to be in the area of limited semantic understanding or world knowledge, not difficulty with understanding or using the grammatical structures of English.

People who have become hard of hearing or deafened later in life may sometimes have literacy and numeracy difficulties, but these will not be caused by their hearing loss.

Articles

Websites

Canadian Hearing Society
Center For Hearing And Communication
Deaf Literacy Initiative (Canada)
Deafness Research Foundation (DRF)
Deafness Research Newsletters
Deafness Research UK
National Institute on Deafnesss and Other Communication Disorders (NIDCD)
RNID is the largest charity representing the 9 million deaf and hard of hearing people in the UK.
Sense - UK charity that supports and campaigns for children and adults who are deafblind
The Coalition For Usher Syndrome Research
Voice For Deaf Kids - giving deaf children a voice for life
We Read 4 You - an exciting new online retailer of Audio Books with thousands of titles to choose from.

Please see our Resources section for more general information.

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