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SSA Blue Book disability listings for vision, hearing, and speech disorders

Social Security uses 7 listings to decide disability claims involving vision, hearing, and speech disorders. Meeting one of those criteria under body system 2.00 approves the claim at step 3, without further analysis of past work or other jobs in the national economy. This page covers every active listing, the medical evidence each one requires, and what happens if your records don't match.

Body system 2.00 in the SSA Blue Book covers vision, hearing, and speech disorders for adult (Part A). SSA uses these listings at step 3 of its five-step disability evaluation. If your medical evidence meets one of the listings on this page, your claim is approved without the disability examiner moving on to past-work and labor-market analysis at steps 4 and 5.

Most claimants who do not meet a listing in this body system can still be approved at later steps based on their residual functional capacity, age, education, and past work. The medical evidence you build for a listing-match argument is the same evidence those later steps rely on, so the listing criteria are useful to read even when a claim looks like a step-5 approval candidate.

Body system code

2.00

Part A

Active listings

7

Specific impairments

Audience

Adults 18+

SSA disability evaluation

Step in evaluation

3 of 5

Listing match approves the claim

Active listings under 2.00

Every listing below has current SSA-published criteria. Codes that SSA reserved for future use or has withdrawn since 1985 are not included. Click a listing where a plain-English breakdown is available, or follow the regulation link for SSA's exact text.

SSA Blue Book listings under 2.00, vision, hearing, and speech disorders
Code Listing Reference
2.02 Loss of Central Visual Acuity ssa.gov
2.03 Contraction of the visual field in the better eye, with ssa.gov
2.04 Loss of visual efficiency, or visual impairment, in the better eye ssa.gov
2.07 Disturbance of labyrinthine-vestibular function (Including Ménière's disease), characterized by a history of frequent attacks of balance disturbance, tinnitus, and progressive loss of hearing ssa.gov
2.09 Loss of speech due to any cause, with inability to produce by any means speech that can be heard, understood, or sustained ssa.gov
2.10 Hearing loss not treated with cochlear implantation ssa.gov
2.11 Hearing loss treated with cochlear implantation ssa.gov

Source: SSA Blue Book, body system 2.00. Last synced 2026-05-04.

What happens during a claim under 2.00

The disability examiner assigned to your claim looks for medical records that match the lettered criteria of one of the listings above. The examiner does not diagnose you and does not weigh symptoms in isolation. They line up the listing's required findings against your records and decide whether the records contain enough to satisfy the listing as written.

If your records meet a listing, the claim is approved at step 3. If not, the examiner moves on to evaluating your residual functional capacity (RFC) at steps 4 and 5. RFC is a description of what work activity you can still do despite your impairments. The listings inform the RFC because the same medical evidence the listings ask for is the evidence the examiner uses to write the RFC. The disability overview walks through the full five-step evaluation in plain English.

Work activity, SGA, and the SSDI gate

A claim under any Blue Book listing is denied at step 1 if you are working at or above the substantial gainful activity threshold. SGA is the monthly earnings test SSA applies before any medical evaluation. Earning above SGA in countable work activity means SSA never reaches the listings on this page. Earning below SGA, or being out of work entirely, lets the medical evaluation proceed.

Once you are approved and receiving SSDI, the trial work period and extended period of eligibility apply differently than at the initial-application stage. Both are explained on the SGA amount page with year-by-year thresholds since 1975.

Children's listings for the same body system

SSA publishes a parallel body system at 102.00 for the children's (under 18) side of the same conditions. Many listings cross over with tighter functional thresholds for the children's version. The Special senses and speech (children) page covers the 5 active listings on that side.