Most deaf people can learn to understand and speak a language at least to some modest degree. Deafness is, however, a barrier to normal language development. Teaching sign language to deaf persons will retard their development of normal language. There is a general agreement among educators today that a combination of manual and oral methods, adjusted to the individual's needs, is an effective way to teach people who are deaf or hard of hearing to communicate. The teaching of sign language does not retard the language development but provides an alternative to spoken language.
Hearing aids are useless to people with sensorineural hearing loss.
A conductive hearing loss is a problem along the conductive pathway of the ear. Sensorineural impairments are confined to the inner ear. Hearing aids can be of some use to people with sensorineural hearing loss, although they are not as helpful as they are for conductive hearing losses. A hearing aid allows people who are hard of hearing to hear normally. The system works on a FM band, and is generally held to be superior to an ordinary hearing aid.