Auditory needs

Introduction

People will have different degrees of a hearing impairment. Profoundly or severely deaf people may rely on hearing aids and lip-reading/speaking, whilst others will struggle with noisy environments.

A hearing impairment can include things like finding issues with background noise through to side effects of medicines.

11 million people in the UK are d/Deaf or hard of hearing ¹ and 70% state that their hearing loss sometimes prevented them from fulfilling their potential at work ² .

Examples of hearing impairments

The following table lists examples of hearing impairments in three columns (permanent, temporary and situational).

Permanent	Temporary	Situational
Deaf (little to no hearing)	Ear infection	Background noise (noisy office)
Hard of hearing (mild to severe hearing loss)	Medicine side effects (such as for neonatal infections, malaria, cancer)	Noise-cancelling headphones (to counteract noise)
	Exposure to loud noises	Poor quality audio

Making things accessible

Make sure any audio has little to no background noise.

Subtitles and transcripts

Keep compliant

Due to the nature of some Intelligence Community apps and services, transcription, subtitles and pre-processing might not be possible. This should always be recorded in your Accessibility Statement with equitable alternatives offered where reasonably possible.

Make sure any audio information is available in text.

For all audio content (including videos with audio) you must provide subtitles and a transcript . Subtitles must not be embedded (rendered) into the video as they need to be readable using assistive technologies.

Don't rely on automated subtitling and transcription because it might be inaccurate. Always check any automated subtitles and transcripts for accuracy.

References

1. Facts and figures . RNID . Accessed 5 November 2022. Back to content

2. What works: Hearing Loss and Employment . NHS England . Accessed 5 November 2022. Back to content

Last reviewed 15 November 2022 .