Famous Well Known People with Hearing Impairments and Deafness

A hearing impairment or hearing loss is a full or partial decrease in the ability to detect or understand sounds.

A hearing impairment exists when an individual is not sensitive to the sounds normally heard by its kind. In human beings, the term hearing impairment is usually reserved for people who have relative insensitivity to sound in the speech frequencies.

Hearing loss can be inherited. Both dominant and recessive genes exist which can cause mild to profound impairment. If a family has a dominant gene for deafness it will persist across generations because it will manifest itself in the offspring even if it is inherited from only one parent.

People who are hard of hearing have varying amounts of hearing loss but usually not enough to be considered deaf. Many people who are deaf consider spoken language their primary language and consider themselves "hard of hearing".

People with unilateral hearing loss (single sided deafness/SSD) can hear normally in one ear, but have trouble hearing out of the other ear. Problems with this type of deficit is inability to localize sounds.

Those who lose their hearing later in life, such as in late adolescence or adulthood, face their own challenges. For example, they must adjust to living with the adaptations that make it possible for them to live independently. They may have to adapt to using hearing aids or a cochlear implant, develop speech-reading skills, and/or learn sign language.

List of Famous and Well Known People who are/were deaf and have hearing impairments.

Pete Townshend - (born Peter Dennis Blandford Townshend on 19 May 1945 in Chiswick, London), is an award-winning English rock guitarist, singer, songwriter, composer, and writer. The Who rocker Pete Townshend is losing his hearing, and fears the disability will end his songwriting career. Pete Townshend blames his hearing loss on a lifetime spent using headphones, experts say today's iPod Generation is storing up trouble for the future by listening to music at high volumes.

Helen Keller - (1880 - 1968) - Helen Adams Keller (June 27, 1880 – June 1, 1968) was an American author, activist and lecturer. She was the first deaf/blind person to graduate from college. She was not born blind and deaf; it was not until nineteen months of age that she came down with an illness described by doctors as "an acute congestion of the stomach and the brain", which could have possibly been scarlet fever or meningitis. The illness did not last for a particularly long time, but it left her deaf and blind. Keller went on to become a world-famous speaker and author. She is remembered as an advocate for people with disabilities amid numerous other causes.

Thomas Edison - Thomas Alva Edison (February 11, 1847 – October 18, 1931) was an American inventor of Dutch origin and businessman who developed many devices that greatly influenced life around the world, including the phonograph and a long lasting light bulb. In school, the young Edison's mind often wandered. He was noted to be terrible at mathematics, unable to focus, and had difficulty with words and speech. This ended Edison's three months of official schooling. The cause of Edison's deafness has been attributed to a bout of scarlet fever during childhood and recurring untreated middle ear infections.

Ludwig Van Beethoven - Beethoven was as we know a great source of confidence for himself and for others, being able to create music and play music even after being completely deaf is by itself quite a miracle. Although it was clear to everyone that beethoven was but a man, he conquered his disability and led himself to being one of the greatest musicians of all time. If there was one thing that was affecting his struggle to succeed it was not only being deaf, but having to fight all the emotions that he felt inside when he had to turn around to look at the audience applause because he could not hear.

Linda Bove - (born November 30, 1945) is a deaf American actress who played the part of Linda the Librarian on the children's television program Sesame Street from 1971 to 2003. Bove has introduced thousands of children to sign language and issues surrounding the Deaf Community. Her role as Linda on Sesame Street is currently the longest recurring role in television history for a deaf person. Bove attended Gallaudet University. She has been married to Ed Waterstreet since 1970. Like Bove, Waterstreet is also deaf. He also performed with the National Theater of the Deaf.

Johnnie Ray - John Alvin Ray (January 10, 1927–February 24, 1990) was an American singer, songwriter, and pianist. Ray developed a unique rhythm based style, described as alternating between pre-rock R&B and a more conventional classic pop approach. He was partially deaf because of an injury sustained at the age of 13. He became deaf in his right ear at age 13 after an accident during a Boy Scout event. He later performed his music wearing a hearing aid. Surgery performed in New York in 1958, left him almost completely deaf in both ears, although hearing aids helped his condition.

Foxy Brown - Inga Marchand, born September 6, 1978, in Brooklyn, New York City, better known as Foxy Brown, is an American rapper of Afro-Trinidadian and Asian descent. She is known for her solo work and her brief stint as part of hip-hop music group The Firm. Foxy Brown has revealed that she is slowly losing her hearing after being diagnosed with a rare condition that only affects 1 in 10,000. On December 5, 2005, outside of Manhattan criminal court, Brown's attorney Joseph Tacopina stated he wanted to confirm rumors that Brown was almost totally deaf and claimed that he could no longer communicate with her verbally. Brown told reporters on December 15 that she was diagnosed with sudden hearing loss in May while she was recording her upcoming album. Shortly after Tacopina spoke to the public about her hearing condition, news spread that Brown had fired him. According to reports, Tacopina was never given permission by Brown or her agent to discuss her medical condition to reporters.

William Elsworth - Dummy Hoy - (May 23, 1862 – December 15, 1961) was an American center fielder in Major League Baseball who played for several teams from 1888 to 1902, most notably the Cincinnati Reds and two Washington, D.C. franchises. He is noted for being the most accomplished deaf player in major league history, and is credited by some sources with causing the establishment of signals for safe and out calls. Hoy became deaf after suffering from meningitis at age three, and went on to graduate from the Ohio State School for the Deaf in Columbus as class valedictorian. Hoy became the third deaf player in the major leagues, after pitcher Ed Dundon and catcher Tom Lynch. Hoy also worked as an executive with Goodyear after supervising hundreds of deaf workers during World War I. In 1951 he was the first deaf athlete elected to membership in the American Athletic Association of the Deaf Hall of Fame.

Harold MacGrath - American author, (September 4, 1871 - October 30, 1932) was a bestselling American novelist, short story writer, and screenwriter. In an article in the April 23, 1932 issue of The Saturday Evening Post written under the title "The Short Autobiography of a Deaf Man," MacGrath told the public how he had struggled early in life as a result of a hearing impairment. At a time in history when deaf people were almost automatically considered as lacking intellectual acuity, he had hid this from his employer and others. Harold MacGrath's success made him a very wealthy man and although he traveled the world extensively.

Andrew Foster - was the first African American to graduate from Gallaudet College in Washington, D.C.

Angela Stratiy - is an actor and comedian. Her website, DeafUtopia.com, provides workshops on ASL and Deaf culture, as well as solo comedy shows.

Ayumi Hamasaki - Japanese popular singer and songwriter.

Bernard Bragg - An accomplished actor, director, playwright and lecturer

Betty G. Miller - is both a professional visual artist, and a professional counselor working in the field of alcohol and drug abuse with deaf and hard of hearing people.

Christy Smith - Deaf contestant on "Survivor"

Chuck Baird - Masterful Deaf painter and teacher

Clayton Valli - Dr. Valli's Ph.D. in Linguistics and ASL Poetics

Cliff Bastin - British footballer

Douglas Tilden - American sculptor.

Evelyn Glennie - Scottish percussionist.

Ferdinand Berthier - French intellectual, first deaf person to receive the French Legion of Honor. Founder of world's first deaf organization.

Francisco Goya - Spanish painter

Gabriel Fauré - French composer.

Georgia Horsley - Miss England 2007. Also a contestant in Miss World 2007.

Gertrude Ederle - American competitive swimmer, first woman to swim the English Channel.

Granville Redmond - American painter.

Guillaume Amontons - French inventor and physicist.

Heather Whitestone McCallum - became the first Deaf woman to win the title of Miss America.

I. King Jordan - was the first president of Gallaudet University with a profound hearing loss.

John Brewster Jr. (1766-1854) - American, itinerant artist of the Federalist Period in America.

Julia Brace (1807-1884) - early American deaf-blind student at the Hartford Asylum for the Deaf and Dumb.

Juliette Gordon Low - founder of the Girl Scouts of America

Laura Bridgman (1829-1889) - American, first deaf-blind student of Dr. Samuel Howe at the Perkins School for the Blind.

Laurent Clerc (1785-1869) - French-American, co-founder of first school for the deaf in America. First deaf teacher of the deaf in America.

Lon Chaney, Sr. - American actor raised by deaf parents, his upbringing allowed him to better communicate in silent film.

Luis Buñuel - Spanish surrealist filmmaker and poet.

Marlee Matlin - became the first Deaf woman to win an Academy Award for her role in Children of a Lesser God. She won for Best Actress.

Miha Zupan - Slovenian basketball player. First deaf/hearing-impaired person ever to play in the Euroleague.

Oliver Heaviside - British engineer, mathematician and physicist.

Phyllis Frelich - won the Tony Award for her role in the stage production of Children of a Lesser God.

Pierre Desloges (1742-??) - French deaf writer and bookbinder. First known deaf person to publish a book.

Pierre de Ronsard - French poet.

Robert R. Davila - is the current president of Gallaudet University.

Rudi Carrell - Dutch popular singer.

Ryan Adams - American alt. country artist.

Sir William McMahon - Australian politician and former Prime Minister.

Terrylene Sachetti - Deaf actress, poet, storyteller, mime, and dancer

Trix Bruce - Trix performs amazing feats of American Sign Language skill, thrives on audience interaction, and enjoys accepting artistic challenges.

Walter Geikie - Scottish painter.