Sensory support

Sensory loss includes varying degrees of deafness, deafblindness and visual impairment including those at risk of sensory loss and those who may be living with hidden and untreated loss which may be present in people with learning disabilities or conditions such as dementia or stroke.

Hearing loss

A person is said to have hearing loss if they are not able to hear as well as someone with normal hearing. It can be mild, moderate, moderately severe, severe or profound, and can affect one or both ears. Major causes of hearing loss include congenital or early onset childhood hearing loss, chronic middle ear infections, noise-induced hearing loss, and age-related hearing loss. The impacts of hearing loss are broad and can be profound.

Sight loss

Sight loss or visual impairment can affect people of all ages and is used to describe sight that cannot be corrected using glasses or contact lenses. There are varying degrees of sight lost whether this is partial or complete. Sight loss can be present at birth or can be acquired though a number of conditions or syndromes. Signs of visual impairment include but not exclusively: blurred vision, sensitivity to light, double vision, flashes of light in your vision, disturbances in your vision or new floating bits in your vision.

Deafblindness/dual sensory loss

People who are deafblind have a severe degree of visual and hearing loss such that the combination of the two causes extreme difficulty in pursuit of educational, vocational, or social goals; communication; access to information and mobility. Some people are deafblind from birth, others may be born deaf or hard-of-hearing and become blind or visually impaired later in life, or the reverse may be the case.