Sign language is a visual language using a combination of hand movements and hand shapes to represent concepts, letters and words. It is cherished by the Deaf community for its beauty and ease of expressing and receiving both complex and abstract concepts. Slight pauses indicate the end of a word. Fingerspelling may be used in signed conversations to express a proper name or a particular term. Residual Hearing and Hearing Aids Hearing losses vary.
Most deaf people have some residual hearing.
The sounds they hear may seem faint, distorted or incomplete. Some deaf individuals have no residual hearing. Lipreading Lipreaders or speechreaders must watch not only the lips, but also the cheeks, teeth, tongue, neck and facial expression of the speaker. Some deaf people are born deaf or lose their hearing before they learn a spoken language. Others become deaf later in life because of illness, injury or congenital conditions.