Glossary
Searchable terminology from accessibility, web standards, and related fields.
20 results found in Hearing.
- Assistive Listening Device (ALD, Hearing Assistive Technology)
- Any device designed to improve audibility for a person with hearing loss, beyond or in addition to a hearing aid or cochlear implant. Common examples include personal amplifiers, FM and radio-frequenc…
- Audiogram (Hearing Test Chart, Pure-tone Audiogram)
- An audiogram is a graph of a person's hearing thresholds measured across a range of frequencies — typically 250 Hz to 8 kHz — plotted separately for each ear. Thresholds are expressed in decibels hear…
- Auditory Comprehension (Listening Comprehension)
- The cognitive and linguistic ability to understand spoken language in real time, including recognising words, parsing grammar, holding clauses in working memory, and integrating meaning across sentenc…
- Background Noise (Ambient noise, Environmental noise)
- The sum of unwanted or competing sound in an environment — traffic, construction, conversation, HVAC systems, weather — that is present alongside a signal of interest. Background noise is characterize…
- Bone-Conducting Headphones (Bone Conduction Headphones, Bone Conduction Headset)
- Headphones that transmit sound by vibrating the skull bones directly to the inner ear, bypassing the outer and middle ear and leaving the ear canals open. In accessibility contexts they are widely use…
- Cochlear Implant (CI)
- A surgically implanted electronic device that provides a sense of sound to individuals who are severely deaf or hard of hearing. Unlike hearing aids that amplify sound, cochlear implants bypass damage…
- Frequency Selectivity (Auditory Frequency Resolution, Critical Band Selectivity)
- Frequency selectivity is the auditory system's ability to separate closely-spaced frequencies into distinct perceptual streams — the reason a typical listener can follow one voice in a crowd, hear the…
- Hyperacusis (Decreased sound tolerance)
- A hearing condition in which everyday sounds are perceived as uncomfortably or painfully loud, even at volume levels that are tolerable for most people. Hyperacusis involves a reduced tolerance for th…
- Loudness Recruitment (Recruitment, Hyperacusis-like Recruitment)
- Loudness recruitment is a common consequence of sensorineural hearing loss in which the range between 'just audible' and 'uncomfortably loud' sounds is compressed — quiet sounds are harder to hear, bu…
- Normal-Hearing Listener (NH Listener, Normal Hearing)
- A research term for a participant whose audiometric thresholds fall within the clinical normal range (typically pure-tone thresholds of 25 dB HL or better across speech frequencies), used as a compari…
- Post-lingual Deafness (Post-linguistic Deafness, Acquired Deafness, Late-Onset Deafness)
- Deafness that occurs after a person has acquired spoken language, meaning they have existing literacy in written and spoken language. Post-lingual deaf users can typically read and write fluently, mak…
- Postlingual Deafness (Postlingually Deaf, Acquired Hearing Loss)
- Hearing loss that occurs after a person has acquired spoken language, typically after about age three to five. Postlingually deaf people usually retain spoken-language fluency, literacy, and memory of…
- Pre-lingual Deafness (Pre-linguistic Deafness, Congenital Deafness)
- Deafness that occurs before a person acquires spoken language, either present from birth or developing in early childhood. People with pre-lingual deafness typically use sign language as their primary…
- Prelingual Deafness (Prelingually Deaf, Congenital Deafness)
- Deafness present at birth or acquired before a child has developed spoken language, typically before around age three. Prelingually deaf individuals commonly learn a signed language as a first languag…
- Presbycusis (Age-Related Hearing Loss, Presbyacusis)
- A gradual, progressive loss of hearing in both ears that occurs as a natural part of aging, primarily affecting the ability to perceive higher-frequency sounds. Presbycusis is the most common cause of…
- Sensorineural Hearing Loss (SNHL, Nerve Deafness)
- Sensorineural hearing loss is hearing loss caused by damage to the hair cells of the inner ear (cochlea) or the auditory nerve, in contrast to conductive hearing loss, which involves the outer or midd…
- Sloping Hearing Loss (High-frequency Hearing Loss, Sloping SNHL)
- Sloping hearing loss is a common audiogram shape in which hearing thresholds are relatively preserved at low frequencies and progressively worse at higher frequencies, producing a downward slope on th…
- Speech Visualization (Visual Speech Display, Speech-to-Visual Display)
- Speech visualization refers to techniques that convert spoken language into visual representations to aid comprehension, particularly for individuals who are deaf or hard of hearing. These displays ca…
- Tinnitus (Ringing in the Ears)
- Tinnitus is the perception of sound - most commonly ringing, buzzing, or hissing - without a corresponding external source. It can be continuous or intermittent, uni- or bilateral, and ranges from mil…
- Visual Speech Aid (Speech Reading Aid, Visual Communication Aid)
- A visual speech aid is an assistive device or system that converts auditory speech information into visual form to help individuals with hearing impairments follow spoken conversation. These aids may …