The Virginia Hearing Aid Specialist license, issued by the Board for Hearing Aid Specialists and Opticians in the Virginia Department of Professional and Occupational Regulation (DPOR), authorises the holder to engage in the practice of fitting or dealing in hearing aids in Virginia. The PassProfessor Virginia Hearing Aid Specialist program, described on the companion program page at /virginia-hearing-instrument-specialist-exam-prep/, prepares candidates for the three examinations that stand behind that license.
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The credential at a glance
| Item | Verified position |
|---|---|
| Program | Virginia Hearing Aid Specialist, the DPOR license for the practice of fitting or dealing in hearing aids in Virginia |
| Licensing body | Board for Hearing Aid Specialists and Opticians, Virginia Department of Professional and Occupational Regulation (DPOR); regulations at 18VAC80-20, as amended effective December 29, 2025 |
| Examinations | Three examinations, all of which must be passed: the written examination — the International Licensing Examination for the Hearing Instrument Dispenser (ILE), as the Board’s license application states — the rules and regulations examination, and the practical examination; each section of the practical examination must be passed, and a candidate who fails one or more practical sections retakes only the sections failed |
| Passing standard | The Board publishes no numeric passing score for these examinations in 18VAC80-20-80; no pass mark is stated in this guide because the Board does not publish one in that form |
| Application fee | $125 (the Board’s application fee for initial licensure under 18VAC80-20-70; the written examination fee and the practical examination fee are established separately under that section) |
| Eligibility | At least 18 years of age; high school completion or a high school equivalency course; documented training and experience covering the fourteen subjects the Board lists at 18VAC80-20-30, verified by a licensed sponsor’s statement including at least six months of experience under the Temporary Permit, by an accredited college or university transcript or other notarised documentation, or by completion of a registered apprenticeship |
| Trainee tier | Hearing Aid Specialist Temporary Permit, issued solely to gain the training and experience required for licensure, held under a licensed sponsor; a registered apprenticeship is held to be a Board-approved temporary permit |
| License term | Licenses expire two years from the license effective date under 18VAC80-20-90, as amended effective December 29, 2025; renewal by fee, with reinstatement required once renewal is more than 30 days late |
| Administrator note | PassProfessor is independent and is not affiliated with the Board for Hearing Aid Specialists and Opticians, DPOR, or the International Hearing Society (IHS) |
Virginia rewards candidates who read the license as the Board built it: one training standard, stated as fourteen subjects, examined three ways. The same subject list governs what a sponsor must teach a Temporary Permit holder, what an applicant must document, and — by the Board’s design — what the written, rules and regulations, and practical examinations test. Around that core sit two clocks that decide more applications than any question does: the 18-month permit period in which training is gained, and the two-year period from the eligibility date in which all three examinations must be passed. The guide below takes each verified element in turn.
Reading the verified facts
Every fact in the table above was pinned to Virginia primary material — the Board’s DPOR pages and the text of 18VAC80-20 as amended effective December 29, 2025 — during this program’s research pass. Three reading rules apply throughout the guide. First, the passing standard is handled only in the form the Board publishes it: 18VAC80-20-80 requires applicants to pass all examinations and publishes no numeric pass mark, so no percentage or score for these examinations appears anywhere in this guide, and any numeric pass figure quoted by third-party material for the Virginia examinations should be treated as unverified. Second, the December 29, 2025 amendments govern where older Board material and the current regulation differ — most visibly on the Temporary Permit, which the amended regulation issues for 18 months, and on license expiry, which the amended regulation sets at two years from the license effective date. Third, the audiologist and physician exemptions are stated only in the Board’s own terms: doctoral audiologists licensed in Virginia are exam-exempt, certain otolaryngology-certified physicians are exam-exempt, and other licensed audiologists are exempt from certain portions — the guide does not generalise any of those positions beyond what the Board prints.
The route, step by step
Step one — confirm the basic qualifications. The applicant must be at least 18 years of age and must have successfully completed high school or a high school equivalency course. Both the license application and the Temporary Permit application test the same two points, and the permit application adds the same conviction and good-standing disclosures the license application requires. Step two — gain the training under a sponsor, an apprenticeship, or a transcript. The standard route is the Temporary Permit: the applicant identifies a licensed sponsor, the Board issues the permit for 18 months solely for gaining the required training and experience, and the sponsor trains the holder across the fourteen subjects — with no referral for testing until at least six months of training under the permit is complete. A registered apprenticeship under the Virginia Department of Workforce Development and Advancement is held to be a Board-approved temporary permit and reaches the same point; accredited college or university coursework, documented by a certified transcript or other notarised documentation, is the third verification route. Step three — apply for licensure with the complete application, the $125 application fee, and the verification of training in one of the three forms the regulation accepts, having signed the statement that the applicant has read and understands Chapter 15 of Title 54.1 of the Code of Virginia and 18VAC80-20. The Board reviews the materials and contacts eligible applicants to schedule the examinations. Step four — pass all three examinations inside the window. The written examination, the rules and regulations examination, and each section of the practical examination must all be passed within two years from the date the Board finds the candidate eligible; a candidate who misses that deadline reapplies as a new applicant and repeats all examinations. Step five — receive and keep the license. The license issues once the examinations are passed, runs for two years from its effective date, and is renewed by fee — with the reinstatement ladder waiting for anyone who lets it lapse. An out-of-state specialist takes a variant of this route: no Virginia practice is permitted on the other license, the Virginia application is still required, endorsement turns on substantial equivalence, and five years of active engagement reduces the examination burden to the rules and regulations examination alone.
The outline in full
Virginia’s outline is the fourteen-subject training set at 18VAC80-20-30, examined three ways. Each subject is stated here with the examination that bears on it most directly, because in this license the three papers interlock: the written examination tests whether the candidate knows the subject, the practical tests whether the candidate can do it, and the rules and regulations examination tests whether the candidate knows what Virginia law allows, requires, and forbids while doing it.
The knowledge subjects: sound, the ear, and the instrument
Basic physics of sound is the foundation subject — frequency, intensity, and the behaviour of sound that every later measurement assumes. The anatomy and physiology of the ear carries the testing subjects: a candidate who cannot reason about the conductive and sensorineural pathways cannot interpret the audiogram the next subjects produce. The function of hearing aids and amplification and basic maintenance and repair of hearing aids form the instrument pair: how amplification works, what its components do, and the first-line servicing the specialist performs in the office. These four subjects belong principally to the written examination — the ILE, as the Board’s application identifies it — but they are not written-only knowledge: the practical examiner can ask the candidate to show what the written paper asks the candidate to state.
The testing subjects: measuring hearing and reading the result
Audiometric testing is the centre of the set, and the regulation spells it out: pure tone audiometry, air conduction and bone conduction, speech reception threshold testing, and speech discrimination testing. Masking when indicated stands as its own subject because the judgement is separable from the technique — knowing how to mask is a skill; knowing when masking is required, and what an unmasked threshold conceals, is the examined decision. Recording and evaluating audiograms and speech audiometry to determine the proper selection and adaptation of hearing aids converts measurement into a fitting decision, and practical tests utilised for selection or modification of hearing aids extends the same logic to the verification and adjustment work after the first fit. This cluster is examined twice over: in writing, as method and interpretation, and in the practical examination, as performed technique — which is why it carries the heaviest preparation weight in this guide’s study plan.
The craft subjects: impressions, selection, and the patient after the sale
Taking earmold impressions and proper earmold selection are the hands-on core of the practical examination: otoscopic awareness before the impression, safe technique during it, and the judgement that matches impression and mould to the ear and the instrument. Adequate instruction in proper hearing aid orientation and the necessity of proper procedures in after-fitting checkup examine the work candidates most often treat as customer service and the Board treats as professional practice — the new wearer’s instruction, and the structured follow-up that confirms the fitting is working. Visible disorders of the ear requiring medical referrals is the safety subject: the specialist’s duty is recognition and referral, not treatment, and the examination tests the boundary. Availability of social service resources and other special resources for the hearing impaired closes the set with the referral landscape beyond medicine — the services the specialist must know exist in order to direct the patient who needs them.
The law subject: Virginia’s rules as an examination of their own
The rules and regulations examination has no counterpart in the fourteen subjects because its syllabus is the law itself: Chapter 15 of Title 54.1 of the Code of Virginia and 18VAC80-20 — entry requirements, the permit and sponsor structure, fees, renewal and reinstatement, standards of practice and conduct, and the grounds on which the Board disciplines. The applicant attests at application to have read and understood both texts; this examination is where that attestation is tested. Endorsement candidates with five years of active engagement take only this examination, which tells the experienced applicant exactly where Virginia thinks the state-specific risk sits: not in whether an experienced specialist can fit a hearing aid, but in whether the specialist knows Virginia’s rules for doing so.
How the examinations are structured
One structural feature of 18VAC80-20-80 deserves a slower pass: the difference between the practical examination’s section rule and the route’s two-year rule, because together they define the retake strategy. The practical examination is forgiving at section level and unforgiving at route level. A candidate must pass each section of the practical examination, but a candidate who fails one or more sections retakes only the sections failed — the passed sections stand. The route, by contrast, has a hard edge: any candidate who has not achieved a passing score on all examinations — written, rules and regulations, and practical — within two years from the date the Board finds the candidate eligible must reapply as a new applicant and repeat all examinations. Two consequences follow for preparation. First, sequencing matters: a candidate who banks the written and rules and regulations examinations early leaves the whole remainder of the window for practical sections and their retakes, while a candidate who leaves everything to the final months has no recovery room. Second, a failed practical section is information, not catastrophe — provided the window still has room in it. The December 29, 2025 amendments also relaxed the examination provisions for Temporary Permit holders, affording permit holders one more chance to pass any part of the license examination; the prudent candidate plans as if that chance will not be needed, and treats it as the margin it is.
The sittings themselves
The Board’s process is administrative before it is academic: eligible applicants are contacted to schedule the required examinations once their materials are reviewed, and 18VAC80-20-80 requires every examination to be Board-approved and administered by the Board, a testing service acting on the Board’s behalf, or another governmental agency or organisation. The candidate must follow all rules the Board establishes for conduct at the examination, including written instructions communicated before the examination date and instructions given at the site, written or oral, on the day; failure to comply is grounds for denial of the application. That conduct rule is worth reading literally — in Virginia the application itself, not merely the sitting, is at stake in an examination-conduct failure. The written examination is the ILE as the Board’s application identifies it, so its delivery follows the arrangements the Board and the International Hearing Society publish for Virginia candidates at the time of scheduling; the practical examination is administered by the Board and is taken section by section, with the results determining which sections, if any, must be retaken inside the two-year window.
A study plan built on how these examinations are actually put together
Build the plan in the order the route consumes it. First, the testing cluster to performance standard — pure tone air and bone conduction, speech reception threshold and speech discrimination testing, masking decisions, and audiogram evaluation, practised as performed procedures and not only read as method, because this cluster is examined in writing and again under observation. Second, the knowledge frame — physics of sound, ear anatomy and physiology, hearing aid function and amplification, and maintenance and repair — studied to the depth the written examination assumes, including the referral-recognition subject: visible disorders of the ear, learned as a recognition drill with a referral answer. Third, the craft pair — earmold impressions and earmold selection, rehearsed physically until the sequence is procedural, with orientation instruction and after-fitting checkup procedures scripted and practised as the professional performances they are examined as. Fourth, Virginia law as its own subject — Chapter 15 and 18VAC80-20 read as examination texts, with the permit, sponsor, renewal, and discipline provisions learned in the regulation’s own structure. Fifth, the calendar — sponsor referral timing, the permit’s 18 months, and the two-year examination window mapped before the first sitting is booked, so that no part of the plan depends on an extension the Board may or may not grant.
The working method: turning the outline into a performance
Preparation for Virginia fails in a characteristic way: candidates study the license as a knowledge test and meet the practical examination as a surprise. The working method that answers it has four parts. Practise the procedures, not only the prose. Every testing and impression subject is rehearsed hands-on, with timing and sequence, and every rehearsal ends with the question the practical examiner is really asking: was that performed to standard? Keep an error log keyed to the fourteen subjects. Every missed item, written or practical, is filed by subject — masking, audiogram evaluation, earmold selection, referral recognition — and after two weeks the log, not the candidate’s confidence, assigns the remaining study. Read the law in the regulation’s own order. Chapter 15 and 18VAC80-20 worked through section by section, with the candidate able to state, for each provision, who it binds and what it requires; the rules and regulations examination rewards the candidate who has read the text over the candidate who has read summaries of it. Protect the window. The two-year eligibility clock is tracked like a study subject of its own: sittings are booked early enough that a failed practical section is a retake, not a reopening of the whole application.
The errors these examinations are built to catch
The Virginia set catches a recognisable list. Treating the Temporary Permit as a license — it authorises supervised training only, under a sponsor who answers for the holder’s competence and conduct, and it expires into an examination obligation, not a credential. Being referred for testing too early or too late — before six months of training the sponsor must not refer at all, and a holder who drifts to the end of the 18-month permit without a scheduling plan has spent the training period without banking examinations. Written-only preparation concedes the practical examination’s sections, each of which must independently be passed. Masking as technique without judgement — performing the steps while missing the indications — fails the subject the regulation deliberately lists separately. Skipping the law because it looks administrative fails the one examination every route, including the five-year endorsement route, requires. And letting the two-year window close with one examination outstanding converts a nearly finished application into a new application and a full repeat of all examinations.
The credential in one view
The Virginia Hearing Aid Specialist license in one view is a supervised apprenticeship converted, by examination, into independent practice. The state specifies what must be learned — fourteen subjects spanning acoustics, measurement, instrumentation, craft, patient instruction, and referral — specifies who must teach it, in the licensed sponsor who certifies the training and documents the supervision, and then examines the result three ways: knowledge in writing, law in writing, and craft in performance. The structures around the examinations serve the same end: the permit keeps the trainee inside supervision while the learning happens, the two-year window keeps the examinations inside the period the training is fresh, and the section-by-section practical keeps a single weak procedure from being averaged away by strong ones. The candidate who studies the license as that single design — learn the subjects under supervision, then prove them three ways — finds the three examinations reinforcing each other rather than competing for study time.
After the sittings: the license and its clocks
The license issues once all examinations are passed, and its own clocks start: expiry two years from the effective date, renewal by fee, notification of any change of name, address, or email address within 30 days, the license displayed at each site of employment, and practice only under the name in which the license issued. The reinstatement ladder is short and worth memorising before it is needed: renewal more than 30 days late requires reinstatement, and two years past expiry the license cannot be reinstated at all — the former specialist applies as a new applicant under the regulations then in force, examinations included. The specialist who treats renewal as part of practice meets it as a formality; the specialist who treats the license as a finished event meets the two-year bar as a second licensure.
Frequently asked questions
Which Virginia regulation governs this license?
The Hearing Aid Specialists Regulations, 18VAC80-20, issued by the Board for Hearing Aid Specialists and Opticians under Chapter 15 (§ 54.1-1500 et seq.) of Title 54.1 of the Code of Virginia — read in the form amended effective December 29, 2025, because the amendments changed, among other things, the Temporary Permit period and the license expiration rule.
What are the three examinations, in one view?
The written examination — the International Licensing Examination for the Hearing Instrument Dispenser (ILE), as the Board’s license application states it; the rules and regulations examination, on Virginia’s law of the profession; and the practical examination, administered by the Board and passed section by section. All three must be passed.
Why does the guide not state a passing score?
Because the Board does not publish one in that form. 18VAC80-20-80 requires applicants to pass all examinations, requires each section of the practical examination to be passed, and sets the two-year completion deadline — and publishes no numeric pass mark. A guide that printed a percentage would be inventing the standard it claims to teach.
Can the sponsor refer a permit holder for testing at any time?
No. Under 18VAC80-20-40 the sponsor must not refer the Temporary Permit holder for testing until the holder has completed at least six months of training under the permit. The same section makes the sponsor responsible for the holder’s competence and proper conduct, requires documented hours of direct supervision, and bars independent field work without on-site direct supervision until the holder is adequately trained.
What happens if one section of the practical examination is failed?
Only the failed sections are retaken. The applicant must pass each section of the practical examination, and 18VAC80-20-80 provides that candidates failing one or more sections will be required to retake only those sections — always inside the two-year window for passing all examinations.
Does a registered apprenticeship replace the Temporary Permit?
The regulation holds a registered apprenticeship under the Virginia Department of Workforce Development and Advancement to be a Board-approved temporary permit, and an apprenticeship completion form — including all required related instruction, or an equivalent out-of-state registered apprenticeship — is one of the three accepted verifications of training and experience.
How does licensure by endorsement work?
Under 18VAC80-20-50, the applicant must be licensed in good standing in another jurisdiction, must show that the requirements under which that license issued are substantially equivalent to and not conflicting with Virginia’s chapter, and must successfully complete the sections of the examination the Board specifies. An applicant who demonstrates active engagement in the profession for the preceding five years will only be required to take the rules and regulations examination.
What does the Board do with a criminal conviction on an application?
A prior conviction does not automatically prevent licensure, and there are no barrier crimes that absolutely prohibit it. State law requires the Board to evaluate applicants with past convictions case by case against the nine factors in § 54.1-204.B of the Code of Virginia, and only the full Board, voting in public session, can deny an application. The regulations separately require disclosure of specified misdemeanour and felony convictions on both the license and the permit applications.
How long does a Temporary Permit last, and can it be extended?
Eighteen months under 18VAC80-20-40 as amended, after which the former holder must sit for the examination. The Board may extend the permit at its discretion for serious personal illness or injury, a death in the holder’s immediate family, military or Peace Corps service, or other good cause of similar magnitude, on documentation received within the regulation’s deadlines.
Is PassProfessor affiliated with the Board or DPOR?
No. PassProfessor is an independent preparation provider, not affiliated with the Board for Hearing Aid Specialists and Opticians, DPOR, or the International Hearing Society. The Board alone issues the license, and this program satisfies no training, permit, or examination requirement.
When does enrollment open for the PassProfessor program?
The program is in the works and enrollment is not yet open. Leave an email address on the companion program page and PassProfessor will write to you when the program is ready — and only about this program.