Educational Audiology Awareness Week promotes advocacy for the Educational Audiology profession along with professional recognition and thanks. Below are resources you can use to help spread EdAud Awareness! #EdAudWeek #EdAudAdvocacy
Thank You for Celebrating EdAud Awareness Week 2026
Thank you to everyone who took part in Educational Audiology Awareness Week 2026! This year’s theme was Connect, Collaborate, Cultivate: Driving Student Outcomes. Educational audiologists are important team collaborators in serving deaf and hard of hearing students, from the provision of special education related services to 504 plan accommodations. This year, we highlighted the partnerships educational audiologists have with other professionals and families to maximize services and support to fuel student achievement.
Hosted by the Educational Audiology Association (EAA), this week recognized and thanked the professionals who help students who are deaf and hard of hearing thrive in school. The resources below stay up all year, so keep sharing them and help us spread the word. #EdAudWeek #EdAudAdvocacy
We want to hear from you
How did the week go?
Tell us what worked, what you would change, and what theme you would like us to take on for Awareness Week 2027. Every note goes to EAA’s Vice President of Professional Materials.
Five days, five collaborations, one student at the center. Each day connected you with a different part of a student’s team, showed what it looks like to collaborate there, and what that partnership cultivates for the student. Thank you to everyone who read along, shared the days with colleagues, and filled in a passport.
Day 1 · Mon
Emergency Planning
Day 2 · Tue
PT / OT Collaboration
Day 3 · Wed
SLP Interprofessional Practice
Day 4 · Thu
Psychology Teamwork
Day 5 · Fri
Parents & Family Partners
Thank you for taking the passport! You have until Saturday, October 31 to complete the entry form.
Two winners, two prizes. Details are just below.
Entry form open until October 31
Two winners. Two prizes.
Every completed passport goes into one drawing, and we will pull two winners: one receives the membership and the other receives the handbook. Only interested in one of the prizes? Say so on the entry form and you will only be eligible for that one. If both winners are open to either prize, we will assign the prizes at random.
Prize One
A One-Year EAA Membership
Regular or student membership, whichever fits the winner. Already a member? Your next year is on us. Either way it means the member listserv, free webinars, the discounted conference rate, and a year inside the community that does this work every day.
Fourth Edition · Cheryl DeConde Johnson & Jane B. Seaton · Plural Publishing, 2026
The reference most educational audiologists reach for first: 669 pages of protocols, forms, and guidance covering nearly everything in this week’s five days. A $154.95 value.
You have until Saturday, October 31 to complete the entry form.
Open to everyone. One entry per person. Entries close October 31, 2026 and both winners will be drawn and notified in early November.
Revisit the Week, Day by Day
A fire alarm a student cannot hear. A lockdown announcement over an intercom with no visual equivalent. Hearing technology that comes off during an evacuation and stays behind. Emergency plans are written for the whole building, and students who are deaf or hard of hearing are the ones most easily left out of them.
Connect
Ensuring Safety Through Student AdvocacyInvolve D/HH students in the development and refinement of emergency preparedness plans to understand their perspective and prioritize their needs.
Collaborate
Checking Emergency Protocols for AccessibilityCollaborate with building and district emergency management to ensure visual alerting and warning systems are integrated for D/HH students.
Cultivate
Strengthening Emergency ReadinessUse student, parent and staff feedback to continuously improve communication access, ensuring D/HH students receive timely, accessible, and effective emergency information when it matters most.
How a student sits, moves, and handles their own equipment runs straight through the work physical and occupational therapists do. Positioning changes where a remote microphone should sit. Motor planning changes whether a student can manage their own device. Sensory needs change how long they will tolerate wearing it at all.
Connect
Optimizing the “Listening Posture”We collaborate with PTs to ensure students have the core physical stability and ergonomic seating needed to reduce physical strain, freeing up essential “brain power” for auditory processing.
Collaborate
Balancing the Sensory EnvironmentBy partnering with OTs, we align a student’s acoustic tech with their unique sensory processing needs—ensuring amplification provides optimal speech clarity without causing sensory overload in noisy school spaces.
Cultivate
Integrating Wearable Tech & MobilityWe work together to seamlessly customize how hearing technology integrates with mobility aids, standers, or sensory tools, ensuring a student’s gear never gets in the way of their movement or independence.
Speech-language pathologists and educational audiologists often share the same student, the same IEP, and the same goal, approached from two directions: audibility and language. Neither one gets a student all the way there alone. A signal the student cannot hear cannot become language, and language the student has never been taught cannot be understood no matter how clean the signal.
Connect
Bridging the Link Between Auditory Access and Speech-Language DevelopmentConnecting with SLP colleagues ensures that a student’s hearing capabilities are aligned with their communication, academic, and social demands.
Collaborate
Ensuring Accurate Diagnosis and Preventing MisclassificationSLPs can avoid misdiagnosing a D/HH child with a primary language or learning disorder by ensuring an educational audiologist is part of the evaluation. Collaboration is especially critical for complex cases.
Cultivate
Holistically Advancing Literacy and Social-Emotional OutcomesCommunication is the foundation for academic success, cultivated with SLPs who can help craft coordinated and aligned intervention plans for D/HH students across domains.
School psychologists assess cognition, attention, and social-emotional functioning, and hearing runs through all three. A student who misses the end of every sentence can look inattentive. A language gap built by years of partial access can look like a learning disability. Psychologists are also often the first to notice when a student is unsafe, and children who are deaf or hard of hearing face a higher risk of maltreatment than their hearing peers.
Connect
Capturing the Whole ChildEdAuds work alongside school psychologists to remove barriers to assessment and capture a student’s true capabilities.
Collaborate
Uncovering Unmet NeedsSchool psychologists and EdAuds partner to maximize educational success and to identify gaps in services or areas to enhance.
Cultivate
Collaborating on Social-Emotional LearningEdAuds and School Psychologists partner with families to foster strong social-emotional health and positive student outcomes.
Every other member of the team changes: new school, new grade, new district, new job. Families are the only ones who stay for the whole journey. They hold the history, troubleshoot the equipment at seven in the morning, and make the decisions everyone else recommends.
Connect
Families as PartnersEngage with the team member who supports the student at every stage of their journey.
Collaborate
Shared Decision-MakingStrategize with families, rather than prescribe. Work together to find what works best for families and students.
Cultivate
Holistically Empower the VisionEngage families to sustain and carry out the plan beyond direct professional support.
Family-to-Family Support, connecting families to parents further along the same journey, Hands & Voices Family Leadership in Language and Learning (FL3)
This week is about the people a student who is deaf or hard of hearing depends on, so the shirts are too. There is one for each of us. Most of the staff you walk past on a Monday morning have never heard the phrase “educational audiologist,” and a shirt in a staff room does more about that than any web page can. When someone asks what it means, you have started the conversation this whole week is about.
Shirts from $16. Buy one for yourself, or for the colleague who always picks up the FM. Snap a photo and tag #EdAudWeek so we can share it.
One for each role
New for 2026, carrying this year’s theme. Each comes in a range of colours, so a team can match or you can stand out.
Sweatshirts, totes, posters, magnets and more, available all year.
Explore Past Years
When a Deaf or Hard-of-Hearing toddler is starting school, the change for their family can seem daunting. How will their child access communication in the classroom? How does the family plan for their technology needs as they become school-aged? What is the best placement for their child? How will they do in school? Will they have friends? Educational Audiology Awareness Week spotlights resources for clinicians and families as their child prepares for the classroom and how to help these children succeed.
