VIDBE-Q 2025 Volume 70 Issue 2
difficult, and some students are diagnosed with a comorbid disability later due to
the challenges in diagnosis (Wiley & Meinzen-Derr, 2012).
Hearing loss alone can significantly impact a student's language, social
development, and reading skills (Scott & Dostal, 2019). Children with vision loss
may have more aberrant behaviors in new environments (Jacko, 2023). Many of
these students need additional support in their educational settings, such as close
proximity to the teacher, visuals, braille, interpreters, modifications to the
curriculum, interpreters, and amplification. Amplification devices such as cochlear
implants, hearing aids, and Bone Anchored Hearing Aids (BAHAs) can help
children hear and communicate, but students with hearing loss still tend to miss
many essential language cues. Language skills in children with hearing loss can
vary due to many factors, such as amplification, language input, and more.
Hearing loss and vision loss can compromise language and communication,
which are essential to a child's overall development. If the communication and
language input a child is exposed to is not meaningful, the child may show deficits
in syntax, phonology, semantics, morphology, or pragmatics and experience gaps
in language development. Children with hearing loss often need increased
exposure to language compared to typically developing children. Students who are
DWD tend to have limited communication and language and thus may display
