Hearing and Vision Impairments

Defining Hearing Loss Dear and hard of hearing describes hearing loss Unilateral or bilateral IDEA defines deafness as a hearing impairment that is so severe that the student is impaired in processing linguistic information through hearing, with or without amplification and that adversely affects the student’s education performance The severity of hearing loss is measured through decibels (dB) – Deaf=70-90 dB – Harding of hearing =20-70 dB Congenital deafness is a rare condition Deaf community prefers term “deaf child” to hearing impaired

Determining the Causes Congenital Acquired Genetic causes Prenatal causes – Hypoxia – Rubella – Other illnesses – Premature infants Postnatal causes – Bacterial meningitis – Acute otitis media (ear infections) Postlingual casues – Trauma to skull, excessive noise

Determining the Presence Diagnostic Assessment – Screen all newborns for hearing loss before 1 month of age – Evaluate all infants who screen positive before 3 months of age – Early interventions (initiated before 6 months) Medical personnel – Otologist (physician) – Audiologist (measures hearing) Hearing aides Cochlear implants

Big Issues Cochlear implant – feature=related feature=related – eature=related eature=related

Determining the Nature of Specially Designed Instruction and Services Educational evaluation How hearing is tested – Audiometer – Audiogram (behavioral) – Typanograph – Speech audiometry

Vision Impairment Defining Visual Impairments – Two different definitions Legal definition – Based on acuity and filed of vision – IDEA definition Low vision Functionally blind Totally blind

Characteristics Incidental Learning – The way sighted children naturally learn about their environment – Lack of incidental learning skills can impact the development of motor, language, cognitive and social skills Limitations in range and variety of experiences Limitations in the ability to get around Limitations in interactions with the environment

Determining the causes Congenital vision impairments – Occur at birth or before vision memories have been established Adventitious vision impairments – When a person has had normal vision but then acquires a vision loss

Determining the presence Determining how a student uses vision – FVA – Provides more concrete information about a student’s vision that may help in making IEP decisions Determining the appropriate reading medium – Finding the appropriate learning medium (learning medium assessment) Braille, print, audiotapes, and access technology – Allows the IEP team to know needed accomodations

Determining the Nature of Specially Designed Instruction and Services Expanded Core Curriculum – Compensatory and Communication Skills – Social and interaction skills – Orientation and mobility skills Informal assessments should include the student’s ability to function independently Assessments should include the age-appropriateness of tasks – What are the student’s peers doing? – Determine skills typically learned through incidental learning, analyze task involvement, and begin teaching these tasks earlier Avoid making assumptions about a student’s previously acquired learning