This article describes the preschool program at Missouri State University where deaf and hard of hearing children with all communication modalities and all styles of personal assistive listening devices are served. The job of the early intervention providers is to model for parents what high expectations look like and how to translate those…

The United States is more accessible to deaf and hard of hearing individuals and people with disabilities today than it was 50, 20, or even 10 years ago. A variety of laws ensures equality in the treatment of deaf and hard of hearing people. Communication barriers have been addressed, and wider opportunities are available in education, employment,…

With the onset of universal newborn hearing screenings and early identification and amplification, children with hearing loss are able to receive education in mainstream classrooms as early as preschool. According to a 2011 report from the U. S. Government Accountability Office (GAO), 52.6 percent of preschool-age children with hearing loss in the…

Current trends and issues surrounding birth screening, early intervention services, and deaf children's varying access to language and literacy demonstrate a critical need to improve one's understanding of how to involve families as partners in their children's education. In the past decade, increasing numbers of deaf children have been identified…

The youngest deaf and hard of hearing children with disabilities in Colorado can now participate more fully in the world around them thanks to funding from grants solicited through the Early Education Department at the Colorado School for the Deaf and the Blind. The grants enable the children, from birth to age 3, to overcome their physical…

Autism awareness is spreading like wildfire. Diagnoses have increased at an astounding rate. The statistic most often quoted is that 1 child in 150 has autism. As if the high rate of autism diagnoses were not worrisome enough, many doctors are not properly trained, or kept up to date, on how to detect autism at the earliest possible age. In many…