Deafness

  
Hearing 
Braille 
Ear Diseases 

 
Deaf World Web 
"The Central Deaf Point on the Internet". 
Basic Guide to ASL 
Simple tutor for American Sign Language. 
Interactive Finger Spelling and Braille Guide 
In-progress projects for communicating with disabled persons.

When you are unable to hear, you are usually unable to speak as well. Most people learn how to speak by listening and imitating sounds they hear. Even if they do speak, it may be incomprehensible because they have no way to verify they are speaking comprehensibly. The same problem occurs for those with mild hearing impairments: people with hearing aids often speak louder than other people. 

Deafness Types 
There are four basic ways hearing can be lost: 

• Conductive hearing loss, caused by disease or obstruction to outer or middle ear is usually only minor, and can be corrected with a hearing aid, or helped through medical treatment. 
• Sensorinerual hearing loss is attributed to damaged sensory hair cells or inner ear, with a wide range of severity including total deafness. Often, loss only occurs to sounds in certain frequency  ranges. 
• Mixed hearing loss is caused by problems involving the outer or middle ear and the inner ear. 
• Central hearing loss is the result of impairment of nerves within the central nervous system.

Training 
Until the 16th century people didn’t think deaf persons could be educated. But people began to reconsider this. A Spanish Benedictine monk, Pedro de Ponce, was the first teacher of deaf students, and in 1620 Spaniard Juan Paulo Bonet wrote a book on educating deaf persons. By the 18th century schools were being established to educate deaf children. Teachers often debated how these children should be taught. Two reknown educators of the time, Abbé Charles Michel de l’Épée of France preferred manual methods (signs and finger spelling) while German Samuel Heinicke used oral methods (lip-reading and speech). They studied each other’s methods, but both remained loyal to their respective teaching styles. However, people have learned that their students did not have reduced intellectual capacity, but experience a delay in the amount of knowledge they can attain at a young age. Those who receive early language stimulation through signing tend to perform well in their future. 

Today deaf children begin school at the same age as other students, with 30% attending "normal" classes, with the ratio increasing every year. 

Non-vocal communication 
Because deaf people cannot speak and hear does not mean they cannot communicate. Many traditional forms of communication don’t require the ability to hear anyway, such as reading and writing. Educators of the deaf have developed many alternative communication methods, such as lip-reading, American Sign Language, Manually Coded English, Cued Speech, finger spelling, miming & gesturing, and the use of electronic media, such as computers. 

Finger spelling is an alphabetic system where hand shapes and positions correspond to specific letters in the written alphabet. Even more comprehensive is American Sign Language, or ASL, in which signs are developed for both concrete and abstract meanings. The language is as complex as traditional ones, and is adaptable to the basic syntax and grammar of Standard English. 

Other communication systems include lip-reading, where the communicating persons study the movement of lips to determine the syllables being spoken. To aid this is Cued Speech, where eight hand movements indicate each syllable  being spoken. 

Deaf Life 
Once the boundaries of deafness are overcome, those with the disability can live prosperous lives. Today deaf persons can be employed in almost any vocation, excluding those that require good hearing for such reasons as safety. Despite an increase in the amount of employers hiring deaf persons, as with other minorities, discrimination still exists, and compared to the general population, a large percentage are unemployed or under-employed.