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
EdAud Awareness Week 2026
We are excited to announce that the 2026 theme for Educational Audiology Awareness Week is 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 will highlight 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 recognizes and thanks the professionals who help students who are deaf and hard of hearing thrive in school. Explore the resources below, share them widely, and help us spread the word. #EdAudWeek #EdAudAdvocacy
Five days, five collaborations, one student at the center. Each day you will connect with a different part of a student’s team, see what it looks like to collaborate there, and learn what that partnership cultivates for the student. Read to the bottom of each day and you will find that day’s code word, shown for that day only. Write all five down as you go. At the end of the week you enter them with your email address, and that is your entry in both drawings.
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
A new code word appears each weekday and is gone the next morning. Check in daily.
Two winners, two prizes. Details are just below. The stamps above are just a progress tracker for this browser, so if you read on your phone one day and your computer the next, do not worry. The five code words are what count.
Finish the passport to enter
Two winners. Two prizes.
Every completed passport goes into both drawings. We will draw one name for the membership and a separate name for the handbook, so a single passport gives you two chances and no one wins twice.
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.
The entry form opens Friday, October 23, once the fifth code word is out.
Open to everyone. One entry per person. Entries close October 31, 2026 and both winners will be drawn and notified in early November.
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
Meet the people who actually write your building's emergency plan.
Collaborate
Walk a drill together and find every point where the plan assumes hearing.
Cultivate
A student who knows exactly what to do when the alarm goes off.
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
Meet the therapists shaping how a student sits, moves, and handles equipment.
Collaborate
Match positioning, motor planning, and sensory needs to the device fitting.
Cultivate
Technology that stays on the student for the whole school day.
Day 2 Resources
Placeholder for PT / OT collaboration links here
Today’s code word loads here.
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
Meet the professional who already shares your student and often your goals.
Collaborate
Align audibility targets with language targets instead of running them in parallel.
Placeholder for SLP interprofessional practice links here
Today’s code word loads here.
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 two to three times the risk of maltreatment their hearing peers do.
Connect
Meet the evaluator whose conclusions follow a student for years.
Collaborate
Get hearing into the evaluation before the team draws its conclusions.
Cultivate
An accurate picture of the student, and a safer one.
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
Meet the only team members who stay for the whole journey.
Collaborate
Share the decisions with families rather than delivering them.
Cultivate
A family who can carry the plan when no professional is in the room.
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.
Order in time
Shirts are printed to order, so allow about two weeks. Order by Friday, October 9 to be wearing yours during Awareness Week.
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.
