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About Hearing Loss

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Did you know:

  • More than 28 million people in the U.S., including one million children, have some degree of reduced hearing, ranging from profoundly deaf to different stages of progressive hearing loss.
  • 1 in 22 infants born in the U.S. has some type of hearing problem.
  • 1 in every 1000 infants born in the U.S. has a severe or profound hearing loss.
  • About 30% of children who are hard of hearing have a disability in addition to hearing loss. 

Important terms

Severity of hearing loss is a distinguishing factor between people who are deaf and people who are hard of hearing.

Deaf describes a person with severe or profound hearing loss.

Hard-of-hearing describes a person with any degree of hearing loss who can understand some speech sounds with or without a hearing aid.

Hearing-impaired is considered an unacceptable term, as it obscures differences such as communications, education, social relationships, and cultural identity.

Measuring hearing loss

An audiologist measures hearing by frequency in cycles per second (Hz) with the hearing level in decibels (dB). For example, if you have an 80-decibel hearing loss, you would not hear a phone ringing or a dripping faucet, but you could still hear a jackhammer.

If your hearing loss is:

then you can't hear...

Minimal (5-20 dB)

...birds chirping or a dripping faucet.

Moderate (30-60 dB)

...most speech. Certain speech sounds become impossible to discern.

Severe (70-90 dB)

...a piano, the phone ringing, or a motorcycle.

Profound (90+ dB)

...a jackhammer, an airplane, gunfire, or a megaphone.

 

Effects of hearing loss

Because hearing is critical to speech and language development, communication, and learning, how and when a person loses his/her hearing-whether at birth, childhood, or adulthood has varying lifelong effects. Hearing loss in children can cause:

  • a delay in development of communication skills (speech and language)
  • learning problems that may result in reduced academic achievement
  • social isolation or poor self-image due to communication difficulties
  • limited number of perceived vocational choices.