00:04 Deafness is a partial or complete inability to hear sounds.
00:11 A deaf person may have some residual hearing,
00:14 or they may be profoundly deaf, hearing nothing.
00:19 One in six Australians experience some form of hearing loss.
00:27 With an aging population, it is set to increase to one in four by 2050.
00:38 The preferred terms are Deaf and hard of hearing.
00:43"Hearing impaired" should be avoided as it carries negative connotations
00:48 and implies that the individual is ‘less than’.
00:55 The main challenge that a Deaf or hard of hearing person faces in their daily life
01:00 is communicating with mainstream society.
01:06 While some deafness is genetic, surprisingly more than 90% of deaf children
01:14 are born into families where everyone else can hear.
01:18 Commonly, these families have never met a deaf person before,
01:23 so the added uncertainty of a diagnosis, on top of having a new born, can be very challenging.
01:32 Aside from genetics, hearing loss can be caused by illness,
01:36 injury or exposure to excessive noise.
01:43 Young Australians have a greater risk of acquiring a hearing loss through their leisure activities,
01:49 such as listening to music through headphones and regularly going to nightclubs and live music concerts.
01:59 Now you know how to correctly define Deafness