Hearing Aids Help Functionally Deaf and Profoundly Deaf Function in Public
Approximately two to four out of every 1000 people in America are “functionally deaf,” which means they have a voice and use some type of hearing aids to help them hear sounds and voices. More than half of the approximate two to four out of every 1000 persons become deaf later in life and fewer than one out of every 1000 people in the United States experience their deafness before the age of 18. These statistics however are not set in stone and many younger people – people in their late 20s, 30s and 40s – are experiencing profound hearing loss due to loud music from personal listening devices like iPods and MP3 players, which have earplugs that direct loud music into the eardrum and can be damaging to delicate hearing organs.
There is no region larger than another in the United States that has more deaf communities than any other place. Each major city in America has its own deaf community in which each community has their own schools, hang outs and sometimes theaters or other forms of entertainment; the deaf communities are extremely similar to the hearing communities.
The one exception of the United States that may have more deaf people than any other region would be near Washington, DC at Gallaudet University, the world’s largest and all exclusively deaf university in the United States serving only deaf and hard of hearing students. Many deaf and hard of hearing students remain in the Northeast Washington DC area after completing college; therefore the deaf community has grown in this particular region.
Nearly all of the deaf and hard of hearing Gallaudet students graduate and go on to become model citizens with professional jobs such as a dentist DC, Washington, senators and congressmen and women, lawyers for the disabled and even entertainers. However, not all Gallaudet students stay in the Northeast Washington DC area although many do. There is perhaps nothing a hearing impaired or deaf person cannot accomplish in the hearing world, with or without the aid of hearing devices.
Most hearing impaired people use hearing aids to help them hear better and bridge the gap between the silence in the hearing world; however a deaf person could probably not use a hearing aid if they are profoundly deaf and lost most of their hearing at an early age or were born deaf. The deaf community is a proud community and many of them do not consider themselves as having an impairment or a disability.
No matter where a person lives, having a hearing impairment in which a person uses hearing aids or is completely deaf and uses American Sign Language, there is usually a deaf community near them in which the schools, churches and government meetings all provide sign language interpretations for those who need them.