Hearing and Visual Impairments

Abstract

This paper was written to describe the impact of visual and hearing impairments on student’s academic achievement to teachers and other educators. Having knowledge of these impairments allows the teacher to better serve students with these impairments in the classroom.

Hearing and Visual Impairments

Hearing and visual impairments have a major impact on a person’s development and academic achievement. Hearing and seeing are critical to speech and language development, communication, and learning. The earlier in a person’s life that they develop or have these impairments, the more serious the development of the person will be effected. In the same manner, the earlier that the problem is identified and intervention begun, the less serious the impact on that person’s development may be (American Speech Language Hearing Association, 2011).

Hearing Impairments

Hearing impairments are defined as the decreased ability to hear and differentiate sounds. This can range from mild hearing loss to total deafness (March of Dimes, 2010). Humans are able to hear sounds through the brains relationship with the ear. The outer ear absorbs sound waves that travel through the eardrum. These sound waves are then transferred to the middle ear before entering the cochlea. The cochlea is the main receptor organ for hearing and works with inner ear canals that assist with balance to hear and register sounds to the brain. Before an educator can differentiate or modify lesson plans they must first understand the basics of the impairment. The ability to hear sounds directly affects the ability to speak. If speech is affected then the ability to read and write will be affected because these skills are directly related to speech and learning. There are two main types of hearing loss. One is conductive hearing loss. This occurs when there are abnormalities of the outter…

Visual and Hearing Impairments

Educating children has its challenges whether it is in regular or special education classrooms or dealing with behavior modifications or curriculum development. Having a student who is blind or visually impaired increases the challenge for many teachers. Knowing that every child has a different learning style and individual needs than adding to these visual impairments, many teachers find it difficult and stressful and discover why the adaptations are needed for the students. (Google, n.d.) When teaching students with visual disabilities is imperative that they know what and how you are expected to learn. Here are several goals and objectives for a 12-year-old female blind student.(TSBVI, n.d.) Goal #1: To become independent in the use of a braille writer and developing general writing skills and to read what has been written.

Objectives:

1) She will be able to identify dot positions on a swing-cell’s. This will help her to understand key structure of a braille writer 2) she will correctly identify the parts of a braille writer 3) You will be able to use correct fingering techniques used with a braille writer. 4) She will be able to properly load and unload paper into the braille writer. 5) She will be able to identify and use proper academic writing skills. Gold #2: to become proficient in reading a braille letters and configurations and understanding braille fundamentals with the 90% accuracy.

Objectives:

1) She will be able to identify and read braille letters, punctuation marks, numbers (not to exclude Roman numerals) while using a braille writer. 2) She will be up to recognize and read the alphabet upper and lowercase, digraphs while using a braille writer.