Hearing impairment is a full or partial decrease in the ability to detect or understand sounds, caused by a wide range of biological and environmental factors, loss of hearing can happen to any organism that perceives sound.
Deaf or hard of hearing students, like hearing students, vary to some degree in their communication skills. Factors such as personality, degree of deafness, age at onset, and family environment all affect the kind of communication the student uses. As a result of these and other variables, a deaf student may use a number of communication modes.