Sensory loss takes place when a person’s sight or hearing becomes impaired. For some people who have been born with a hearing or sight impairment the term “loss” is inappropriate. However many people who have spent their lives hearing or seeing and will experience a sense of loss if these abilities are affected. Very few people are totally deaf or completely blind so design for sensory loss should be about supporting remaining ability as well as compensating by using other senses.
There are three very distinct groups within sensory impairment: visually impaired people
Sight can help us perceive the world through image, motion and colour. The term sight loss is used to describe those who are ‘blind’ and can’t see at all as well as people who are ‘partially sighted’ and might be able to see something such as shadows or hazy colour. Sight loss can mean people move around and interact with the environment by using alternative strategies which design can support. Sight loss has numerous causes relating to, accident, age, disease and dementia deaf people
In our culture many forms of communication are built around the ability to hear. On this site hearing loss is used to describe those who are either deaf or hard of hearing. It is important to note that people with hearing loss living in care will have a board spectrum of hearing ability that ranges from mild to severe impairment. Hearing loss is one of the most common disorders to affect elderly people and has many causes. deafblind people
When a person has difficulties seeing and hearing then the person can be termed deafblind. Although it is more common to refer to someone as being deafblind if there combined sight and hearing loss which causes difficulties for them with communication, mobility and access to information. The combination of the two sensory impairments intensify the impact of each other, which usually means that a deafblind person will have difficulty, or find it impossible, to