Categories Of Deafness

Imagine planning the perfect world for your child, telling yourself that you will do whatever it takes to make sure your child has a good life no matter the circumstance. But, then, life hits you in the head with a brick and that perfect little life you had planned for your child is the complete opposite of what you imagined. The doctor tells you that you are pregnant with a child that has an extra chromosome that will cause your child to live with Down Syndrome. On the contrary, imagine being the expecting parent in a doctor’s office for a six months checkup and then your doctor notifies you that your baby will be born deaf. Can you imagine? Unfortunately, for some families, this is not a dream, but reality. This paper will compare and contrast

The categories range from mild, having the least case of severity of deafness, through moderate then to severe, and ends at the worst-case severity, being profound deafness. A normal human being can hear sounds between 0 and 140 decibels. When the decibel is at zero, it means that there is no sound occurring. When the decibel is at 140, the noise is closely related to a person being nearby a siren on a Monday morning (“Harmful noise”, 2015). When a person is suffering from mild deafness, they are only able to detect sound between 25-29 decibels. You will find these people struggling to hear another person speaking to them when there is great noise in the background. The next level of deafness is Moderate deafness. People affected by this can only detect sounds between 40-69 decibel. In this case, following along in a conversation just by hearing with no visuals is very difficult and a hearing aid is required. The next stage of deafness is called severe deafness. When you are affected with severe deafness you can only hear sounds from 70-89 decibels. In this situation you are forced to communicate between twos ways lip-reading or the use of sign language, with or without the use of a hearing aid. The most severe case of deafness is profound deafness. When you are in this stage of deafness, it means that you are unable to hear sounds below 90Db or you cannot hear anything at all. The main two communications done at this level is sign language and/or lip reading (“Harmful noise,”