People who are hard-of-hearing or have partial loss of hearing have moderate amounts of hearing loss but not enough to be considered deaf.

The phrase hard-of-hearing, normally used as an adjective or adverb, can also be used as a noun, referring to people with hearing impairment as the hard-of-hearing.

Hearing impaired persons with partial loss of hearing may find that the quality of their hearing varies from day to day, or from one situation to another or not at all. They may also, to a greater or lesser extent, depend on both hearing-aids and lip-reading. They may perhaps not always be aware of it, but they do admit to it being important to see the speaker's face in conversation.

Many people with hearing loss have better hearing in the lower frequency ranges (low tones), and cannot hear as well or at all in the higher frequencies. Some people may merely find it difficult to differentiate between words that begin with consonantal sounds such as the fricatives or sibilants s, z, or th, or the plosives d, t, b, or p. They may be unable to hear thin, high-pitched or metallic noises, such as birds chirping or singing, clocks ticking, etc. Often, they are able to hear and understand men's voices better than women's.

Others will find their condition so much worse if circumstances in their immediate environment affect the way they are able to use their hearing-aids, or prevent them from employing their lip-reading skills. A room with a high ceiling and a lot of reverberation will affect the sound of a speaker's voice adversely. The position of the listener, too, sitting at a right angle to the speaker at a long seminar table, thus being able to hear only with one, maybe the ineffectual ear, can make a difference. Difficulties can also arise for the listener trying to lip-read, if the speaker is sitting with his back against the light-source and is in this way obscuring his face. A rule of thumb is that bright lighting is to the hearing-impaired what noise is to the hearing; a source of distraction.

The speaker's accent; the topic under discussion, possibly with many unfamiliar words; the softness of his voice; possibly his having a speech impediment; a habit of holding a hand in front of his mouth or turning his face away at times: all these tendencies cause problems to the hard-of-hearing, especially when they have to rely on lip-reading. The rustling of papers, and notebook pages being turned are precisely the noises that will be the first thing hearing-aids pick up.

See also

• Post-lingual hearing impairment
• Progressive hearing loss
• Unilateral hearing loss