Sensory Impairment: Jerilyn

Sensory Impairment:

1. Hearing. Limitation, impairment, or absence of the capacity to hear with amplification, resulting in one or more of the following: reduced performance in hearing acuity tasks, difficulty with oral communication, and/or difficulty in understanding auditorally presented information in the education environment. The term includes students who are deaf and students who are hard hearing. (Page: 7)

2. Vision. Limitation, impairment, or absence of capacity to see after correction, resulting in one or more of the following: reduced performance in visual acuity tasks, difficulty with written communication, and/or difficulty with understanding information presented visually in the education environment. The term includes students who are blind and students with limited vision. (Page: 8)

3. Deafblind. Concomitant hearing and visual impairments, the combination of which causes severe communication and other developmental and educational needs. (Page: 8)

The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA, 2004) defines deafness as a hearing impairment that is severe enough that the child cannot process linguistic information through hearing, even when using amplification or hearing aids. This hearing loss adversely affects the child’s educational performance. (Page: 329)

Hearing Loss Is Defined By:

1. The Degree of Loss

2. The Type of Loss

3. The Age at which the Loss Occurred

The severity is determined by the individual’s reception of sound as measured in decibels. The severity is classified as slight, mild to moderate, severe to profound more commonly known as deafness. (Page: 329)

Genetic Causes of Hearing Loss: In more than half of the incidents of congenital hearing losses (loss present at birth) are results of genetic factors. Genetically hearing loss can be inherited from either a non-hearing parent or a hearing parent. Children with other genetically related disabilities, such as Down syndrome, may also have hearing problems. Teachers should also be aware that children who have previously had a normal range of hearing can acquire hearing loss because children with genetic hearing loss can appear months or years later. (Page: 335)

ENVIRONMENTAL causes of hearing loss: Environmental causes include exposure to bacteria, viruses, toxins, trauma, and also due to an infection during the course of pregnancy or in the birth process. During pregnancy an illness or infection a mother might have could cause hearing loss, for example uncontrolled diabetes could cause hearing loss. A lack of oxygen during birth could also result in hearing loss, also a low birth weight could end up resulting in hearing loss. A common cause of loss of hearing in preschool aged children is a result from an ear infection caused otitis media.

characteristics of hearing loss: The first sings of identifying children with hearing loss is when they are a infant. Infants typically make noises that will resemble words whether they can hear or not. At around 12 months a child without a hearing impairment will begin forming words, a child with hearing loss will not. A child with hearing loss will soon start to develop hand motions to describe their needs and parents who also have hearing loss will recognize this right away and begin to teach them sign language, parents who don’t have hearing loss may take a little bit longer to discover what the issue is. This causes a delay in a child’s language development. (Page: 338) Hearing loss will not impact a child’s overall cognitive abilities, but will slow the process. (Page: 341) Reading levels of children who are deaf or hard of hearing tend to be substantially lower then other children but efforts have been made to closing this gap. (Page: 342)

Visual Impairment is Defined By:

1. Blind- cannot use vision for learning but still can be responsive to light and darkness and may have some visual imagery.

2. Low Vision- have difficulty accomplishing visual tasks, but they can learn through the visual sense by the use of various special technologies and teaching techniques.

Causes of visual impairments: there are a variety of conditions that can cause visual impairments from birth to age. Some include hereditary conditions, infectious diseases, cancers, injuries, and various environmental conditions. The most common infectious disease that causes visual impairment is rubella (German measles) contracted during pregnancy. (Rubella also causes other serious birth defects.) Another major cause of visual impairment is called retinopathy of prematurity, which is widely believed to be cause by over admission of oxygen to premature infants in an attempt to save their life. (Page: 365)

Characteristics of children with visual impairments: Children with visual impairments make up a very small percentage of the school population, about four children for every ten thousand students. It is hard to cluster all these students together in one school although there are schools available so has been an increase in effort to provide them with an education within local schools. (Page: 363) Children with visual impairments develop at a slower pace then children without disabilities. A visual impairment hinders a child’s cognitive development as well as their language development. Since these children are without sight they rely on their other senses to identify people, objects, and to regulate motor and social behaviors. (Page: 368)

instructional stratigies for sensory impairment: Assistive technologies are needed for children with sensory impairments. Hearing aids help amplify sounds so those with hearing impairments are able to understand the sounds around them. Sign language is another important strategy for students with hearing impairments. It allows them to communicate since sometimes due to their hearing impairment their speech is difficult to understand. Sign language allows for further communication. In some schools an aid is provided that can translate the lesson at hand into sign language for the child with the hearing impairment. Computers and word processors are helpful for those with hearing impairments because they can read to understand what is going on, also closed captioning on television allows for those with hearing impairments to also understand what is going on. Those who are visually impaired have the ability to express their opinions through speech however since they are not able to see reading is obviously difficult. Braille is used for those who are visually impaired to read. Braille is raised bumps on paper that form letters and words. There are devices that allow students to type and print in Braille and also computers that read back information to the students. For those whose visual impairment is not as severe there are magnifiers and eyeglasses that enlarge text so it can be viewed.

COMMUNITY PROGRAMS FOR SENSORY IMPAIRMENT: The Deaf Community exists as a separate culture group within our society. The Deaf Community has state and local networks, holds world games for the deaf and a Deaf Miss America Pageant. (Page: 345) One of the most outstanding community programs for individuals with special needs is the Special Olympics. They allow for community involvement to help students learn and compete in different activities.

Kirk S. , Gallagher J.J. , Coleman M.R. , & Anastasiow N. (2009).Educating Exceptional Children (12th ed.). Boston, NY: Houghton Mifflin Company.