Hearing Screening Tests for Students with Special Needs

Abstract

Japan's School Health and Safety Act regulates that when administering hearing tests to young children, the right and left ears should be tested separately by audiometer. However, with students having diverse disabilities who are enrolled in schools for those with special needs, testing by audiometer is not always easy because a procedure of this kind is a psychological test which requires children to respond on their own. In this study, speech-language-hearing therapists measured the hearing ability of students enrolled in 9 schools for children with special needs in a particular prefecture. As specialists, they carried out the hearing tests using various methods: infant hearing test, etc. The results showed that they were able to measure a hearing threshold in 98% of the students, and 18% were found to be suspected cases of hearing disorder. Hearing disorders, along with other disabilities, exacerbate difficulty in communication and development of speech and language. We hope this test protocol will be widely adopted.