Understanding Hearing Loss
Meet Mariah
Mariah, 41 years old, Grade School Teacher – Mariah is a teacher at a local school for the deaf and an active member of the deaf community, leading the school’s after-school deaf choir in addition to her regular teaching duties. Mariah lost her hearing at a very young age and American Sign Language has always been her primary language. She sometimes has a hard time following English grammar and idioms or translating all the quirks and nuance of ASL into English.
Exercise: Hearing Loss
This exercise simulates some types of hearing loss. You will hear the same sentence four times. Keep in mind that this is rather simplistic approach because it is “all or nothing”, but it does highlight the difficulties in trying to understand speech when you have a hearing loss.
- Double Click on the “Hearing Simulations” icon on the Desktop.
Listen to four hearing simulations:- Loss of High Frequency
- Loss of Clarity
- Loss of Weak Sounds
- No Hearing Loss
- Listen to the “Hearing Simulations” again while looking at the transcript:
From Emily Dickinson’s poem “‘Hope’ is the thing with feathers”Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul
And sings the tune without the words
And never stops
at all
Exercise: Captions
Watch a video with and without captions.
- Double Click on the “First Video” icon on the Desktop.
What is the topic of this video? - Double Click on the “Second Video” icon on the Desktop.
- Compare your experiences with and without captions. How important are captions to understand this video?