Client Barrier Assessment

The documentary Sound and Fury by Roger Weisberg takes its views inside the rarely seen world of deaf culture for the family struggle over controversial medical technology known as the cochlear

In the documentary, For A Deaf Son a deaf child, named Thomas is born into an all hearing family. Not ever experiencing such a situation in their lives, Thomas’s parents grieve for their child and the fact that they are never going to have the perfect “normal” child they dreamed of having. Knowing that Thomas will not get his hearing back, Thomas’s parent want him to be cured as much as possible, so they make him take speech/oral classes. As Thomas continues to take speech classes over the years his speech improves very little. Not being satisfied with Thomas’s improvement and becoming frustrated with not being able to understand Thomas, Thomas’s father explores the deaf community to find more options available for Thomas to be able to communicate.

Born in 1943 in Pennsylvania, he grew up hearing with a hearing family. His parents both worked in mills and neither of them had graduated high school. His father didn’t even finish elementary school. After he graduated from Penncrest High School in Glen Riddle, Pennsylvania, he joined the military and remained in the Navy for four years. When he was 21-years-old, he was involved in a serious motorcycle accident which left him hospitalized for 14 months with many injuries including skull fractures. He was lucky not to be injured any worse but his accident had left him profoundly deaf. Having no deaf family members, it was a hard transition from the hearing to the deaf world. Two years later he met and married his wife Laura Marie Kephart, who is hearing but fluent in

In order to gain a better understanding of the difficulties faced by people with hearing loss I wore ear plugs for an entire day in a variety of settings. The hearing loss simulation made relatively simple parts of my day much more difficult and really showed how much hearing loss can impact daily life. As discussed in class the shift from being “able-bodied to disabled”, was quite difficult to cope with.

There are many agencies that serve and provide assistance to many in need, young and old. Regardless of their background, culture or heritage, this includes those within the special population. The one sector that was not specifically addressed in these agencies was the need for independence of the handicapped, the hearing impaired and especially veterans of war who are

Fortunately, there are numerous resources available for people with disabilities that offer assistance and programs to meet their everyday needs. The Alabama Institute for Deaf and Blind serves as an educational resource for individuals who are deaf, blind, deaf-blind, and multi-disabled. I decided to research this agency because it has been referenced in my communicative disorders classes. As a future speech language pathologist, I want to learn about this agency and discover the programs it offers to help me with my future clients. The Alabama Institute for Deaf and Blind is relative to this course because as mentioned in the textbook and other course material, resources and programs that offer assistance to individuals with disabilities are essential to their successful futures. This agency is a means in which people who are deaf and blind can seek assistance to improve their skills of communication, and this is ultimately my goal as a speech language pathologist.

The Deaf Community in America: History in the Making by Melvia M. Nomeland and Ronald E. Nomeland is a book written to describe the changes the Deaf community, with a capital “D”, has encountered throughout time. The authors mention, “By using the capital ‘D’ to refer to a community of people who share a language and culture and the lower case ‘d’ to refer to the audiological condition of hearing loss” (Nomeland 3). In this book we are taken through a time line on how the Deaf community’s life changed socially and educationally allowing them to live normally.

Being able to hear is something I think most people take for granted. But what if you cannot hear? On July 15, 2015, I was afforded the opportunity to observe eight-year-old Braydon Smith and five-year-old Peyton Smith, who were born deaf. Their names were changed to protect their identity. Their younger sister, Mackenzie, whose name was also changed to protect her identity, did not have any issues with her hearing. I met with both boys and their mother, Sandra Smith, at a relative’s home in Belton, Texas. However, the family lives in Loganville, Georgia. I found both boys to be energetic, and playful. Their mother seemed excited to tell her sons’ stories. Present at the meeting was Sandra Smith,

Kleinman’s questions are more applicable to deaf people in general who are more in favor of and interested in improving their hearing through hearing aids, cochlear implant, and/or speech therapy. Therefore, they would be more likely to answer his questions even though they do contain the term sickness as these people are more to likely view deafness as a disability compared to people who strictly identify themselves as a part of Deaf culture. Also, Kleinman’s questions can be especially applicable for hearing parents with deaf children who want to raise them as hearing children. According to the ninety percent rule, ninety-percent of deaf children have hearing parents and ninety-percent of hearing children have deaf parents (Sparrow 141). Since hearing parents want to raise their children in the hearing culture, it is ideal for them to be able to utilize Kleinman’s eight questions as a means of providing a way for their deaf children to improve their hearing through hearing aids, cochlear implants, and/or speech

Noise is one of the most widespread causes of hearing loss, and the most likely causes of occupational illnesses in the United States (Leigh 728). Acute or prolonged exposure to high-level, impulsive noise is an ongoing problem for the military and defense forces all over the world (Sliwinska-Kowalska and Adrian Davis 274). One shot from a big caliber firearm, perceived at a close range, may permanently or temporarily damage an individual hearing in an instant. Additionally, repeated exposures to noisy machinery may, over an extensive period of time, impose serious risks to human hearing. According to the report released by National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (NIDCD); ten million Americans have already suffered permanent hearing damage from noise and thirty to fifty million individuals are exposed to hazardous noise levels every day (Leigh 728). Many hearing illness in the police service originate from the noise caused by gunshots. As a result of increased cased of hearing problem, mainly in the police service, many scholars have engaged in research in order to get appropriate mean to control these problem. Considering the increasing investigation from military groups for vital information on how to protect from impulse noise, it is vital to explore health effects associated with impulse noise from gunshots. This study explores the effects on hearing caused by

Turning the Tide: Making Life Better for Deaf and Hard of Hearing Schoolchildren by Gina Oliva and Linda Lytle has valuable information about the challenges hearing-impaired students experience in the public

A hearing protection device (HPD) is often used as a protective measure in a workplace environment when the sound levels of that environment cannot be decreased and such levels pose a threat to the hearing of workers. An HPD is a safety device worn by individual’s to protect his or her hearing from the harmful effects of sound (Berger, 2003). A variety of occupational environments are known to produce high levels of noise, including factories and military operations. Individuals employed in these professions may be required to wear HPDs to reduce the risk of noise-induced hearing loss. However, certain situations in these work environments require the listener to also be able to hear low-level sounds for safety reasons.

David Grout is a 58-year-old male that is diagnosed with a moderate hearing loss and tinnitus. David’s work-related barriers include: trouble communicating over the phone, difficulty hearing contractors especially when all the tools are going, issues communicating with his brother/business partner (always walks away and doesn’t realize he is still talking), and trouble hearing customers who have low or high-pitched voices or have accents.

Hearing loss is prevalent, treatable and frequently undetected (Uhlmann, 1989). It is widely accepted that the prevalence of hearing impairment increases with age. This age related hearing loss is known as presbycusis. Acar, Yurekli, Babademez, Karabulut and Karasen (2011) described presbycusis as a social problem in which people deliberately restrict physical and social activities. There is a prediction for an increasing prevalence of hearing loss due to the greater aging population, the use of personal listening devices, and increased military action.

After reading Henry Kisor’s and Michael Chorost’s accounts of their experience with deafness, I gained knew knowledge about how blindness can affect a person’s life. Despite having different experiences, both men worked hard to adapt to their disability. Reading the excerpts forced me to think about what it would be like to be deaf, and the challenges I would face if I lost my ability to hear.