Whois & Analysis for asha.org

The American Speech–Language–Hearing Association (ASHA) is a professional association for speech–language pathologists, audiologists, and speech, language, and hearing scientists in the United States and internationally.

It has more than 185,000 members and affiliates.

Speech-language pathology is a field of expertise practiced by a clinician known as a speech-language pathologist (SLP), also called speech and language therapist, or speech therapist, who specializes in the evaluation, diagnosis, and treatment of communication disorders, cognition, voice disorders, and swallowing disorders.

Audiology (from Latin, "to hear"; and from Greek) is a branch of science that studies hearing, balance, and related disorders.

Its practitioners, who treat those with hearing loss and proactively prevent related damage, are audiologists.

Employing various testing strategies (e.g. hearing tests, otoacoustic emission measurements, videonystagmography, and electrophysiologic tests), audiology aims to determine whether someone can hear within the normal range, and if not, which portions of hearing (high, middle, or low frequencies) are affected, to what degree, and where the lesion causing the hearing loss is found (outer ear, middle ear, inner ear, auditory nerve and/or central nervous system).

If an audiologist determines that a hearing loss or vestibular abnormality is present he or she will provide recommendations to a patient as to what options (e.g. hearing aid, cochlear implants, appropriate medical referrals) may be of assistance.

Hearing, or auditory perception, is the ability to perceive sound by detecting vibrations, changes in the pressure of the surrounding medium through time, through an organ such as the ear.

In a support group, members provide each other with various types of help, usually nonprofessional and nonmaterial, for a particular shared, usually burdensome, characteristic.

Members with the same issues can come together for sharing coping strategies, to feel more empowered and for a sense of community.

The help may take the form of providing and evaluating relevant information, relating personal experiences, listening to and accepting others' experiences, providing sympathetic understanding and establishing social networks.

A support group may also work to inform the public or engage in advocacy.