In Ohio, the Hearing Aid Dealer and Hearing Aid Fitter licenses, issued by the State Speech and Hearing Professionals Board under Ohio Revised Code Chapter 4747, authorize the holder to measure and test human hearing, select and adapt hearing aids, make earmold impressions, and sell hearing aids. Three examination components stand behind those licenses: the International Licensing Examination (ILE) written examination administered by the International Hearing Society (IHS), the Board’s written Ohio laws and rules examination, and the IHS Practical Examination. The PassProfessor Ohio Hearing Aid Dealer / Hearing Aid Fitter program, described on the companion program page at /ohio-hearing-instrument-specialist-exam-prep/, prepares candidates for that three-part qualifying examination.
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The licenses at a glance
| Item | Verified position |
|---|---|
| Program | Ohio Hearing Aid Dealer / Hearing Aid Fitter, the licenses for practitioners who measure and test hearing, select, adapt and sell hearing aids, and make earmold impressions in Ohio |
| Licensing authority | State Speech and Hearing Professionals Board (Ohio Revised Code Chapter 4747) |
| Examination | Three components, all required: (1) the written International Licensing Examination (ILE) administered by the International Hearing Society (IHS); (2) the Board’s written Ohio laws and rules examination; and (3) the IHS Practical Examination, adopted by the Board effective August 1, 2024, replacing the Board’s own practical examination |
| Passing standard | No passing score is published in the Board and statute sources used for this page, so none is printed here; candidates confirm the current standard with the Board |
| Eligibility | At least 18 years of age, free of contagious or infectious disease, and successful passage of the qualifying examination; training is undertaken under a Hearing Aid Dealer’s and Fitter’s Trainee Permit, held under the supervision of a licensed hearing aid dealer or fitter |
| License term | Valid from issuance until December 31 of the following even-numbered year; renewed biennially by December 31 of each even-numbered year with 20 hours of Board-approved continuing education in each two-year period |
| Administrator note | PassProfessor is independent and is not affiliated with the State Speech and Hearing Professionals Board or with the International Hearing Society |
Ohio rewards candidates who read the route as the legislature built it: one chapter defines the practice, one board controls entry to it, one statute section fixes what the qualifying examination must cover, and three components — set by two different authorities — test that territory in written and performed form. A training permit with a one-year clock governs the apprenticeship; a biennial licence with a continuing education duty governs the career after it. The guide below takes each verified element in turn.
Reading the verified facts
Every fact in the table above was pinned to Ohio primary material — Ohio Revised Code Chapter 4747, Ohio Administrative Code Chapter 4747-1, and the State Speech and Hearing Professionals Board’s own newsletters — during this program’s research pass. Three reading rules apply throughout the guide. First, no passing score is printed, because none appears in those sources: any percentage quoted by third-party material for any of the three components is not carried here, and candidates confirm the current standard with the Board and with IHS. Second, the three authorizations are never merged: figures that belong to the Trainee Permit — one year, one renewal, supervised practice only — are stated only as permit figures, and the audiologist exemption in section 4747.15(C) is stated only as an exemption for audiologists licensed under Chapter 4753, never as a route into the dealer or fitter license. Third, the practical component is stated at its current position: the Board adopted the IHS Practical Examination effective August 1, 2024, replacing its own practical, and older Ohio material describing a board-administered practical is superseded on that point.
The route, step by step
Step one — enter training under the Trainee Permit. Section 4747.10 requires each person training to become a licensed hearing aid dealer or fitter to hold a Hearing Aid Dealer’s and Fitter’s Trainee Permit. The Board issues the permit within thirty days of a properly completed application and fee where the applicant is at least eighteen years of age, holds a diploma from an accredited high school or a certificate of high school equivalence, and is free of contagious or infectious disease. From the first day, the limit that defines the tier applies: no permit holder may engage in the practice of dealing in or fitting hearing aids except while under supervision by a licensed hearing aid dealer or fitter. Step two — run the training clock deliberately. The permit expires one year from the date it was first issued and may be renewed once, if the trainee has not yet completed the qualifying requirements; Board rules require the renewal application before expiry and allow no practice on an expired permit. The training period is therefore a two-year outside window, not an open-ended apprenticeship, and examination scheduling belongs inside it. Step three — pass all three components of the qualifying examination: the ILE written examination administered by IHS, the Board’s written Ohio laws and rules examination, and the IHS Practical Examination. Section 4747.08 is absolute on the consequence: no person shall be issued a hearing aid dealer’s or fitter’s license unless that person has successfully taken and passed a qualifying examination. Step four — apply for the license. The applicant must be at least eighteen, free of contagious or infectious disease, and have passed the qualifying examination; an initial applicant also completes the criminal records check Chapter 4747 requires. A firm, partnership, association, or corporation is licensed only alongside license applications for each person in it who deals in or fits hearing aids, and it may not permit any unlicensed person to sell or fit. Step five — practise inside the chapter from day one: display the license conspicuously at each place of business, notify the Board in writing of every place of practice and any change, furnish the Board-compliant receipt to every person supplied with a hearing aid, and calendar the biennial renewal and its continuing education long before the first December 31 arrives.
The outline in full
The outline has one statutory source and three examining forms. Section 4747.08 names eight areas the written and practical portions must include, and each component takes its share of them: the ILE carries the national professional core, the laws and rules examination carries Ohio’s own law, and the practical carries the performed skills. Candidates who study the eight areas as eight subjects misread a structure that tests one practitioner’s work three ways.
The statutory territory: section 4747.08, area by area
(A) Basic physics of sound is the foundation everything else stands on: frequency, intensity, and the decibel reasoning without which an audiogram is a picture rather than a measurement. (B) The anatomy and physiology of the human ear supplies the structures the audiogram describes and the conditions the fitter must recognise as referral territory rather than fitting territory. (C) The function and purpose of hearing aids covers what instruments do — amplification, components, and styles — and, just as importantly, what they cannot do, because overselling an instrument’s capability is both an examination error and, under section 4747.12, a disciplinary one. (D) Pure tone audiometry, including air conduction and bone conduction testing, is the core measurement skill: threshold technique, the air-bone comparison, and the discipline of a repeatable procedure. (E) Live voice or recorded voice speech audiometry, including speech reception threshold testing and speech discrimination testing, adds the speech measures that cross-check the pure tone record — a speech reception threshold that disagrees with the pure tone average is a finding, not a nuisance. (F) Masking techniques govern when the non-test ear must be kept out of the measurement and how, the procedural judgement that separates a valid threshold from an artefact of cross-hearing. (G) Recording and evaluation of audiograms and speech audiometry to determine proper selection and adaptation of hearing aids is where measurement becomes dispensing: reading the combined record and choosing and adapting the instrument it supports. (H) Earmold impression techniques close the list with the one area whose output is a physical object, judged on its quality as an impression. The statute adds two framing points candidates should hold onto: the examination is a thorough testing of the knowledge required for proper selecting, fitting, and sale — and it is expressly not an examination requiring a medical or surgical education. Ohio tests the dispensing practitioner it licenses, at full depth, and nothing else.
Component 1: The ILE written examination
The International Licensing Examination, administered by the International Hearing Society, is Ohio’s national written component and the part of the route a candidate shares with applicants in most other ILE states. Its examined loyalty is to the shared professional core inside the section 4747.08 territory — acoustics, ear anatomy and physiology, hearing aid function, audiometric method, masking, and record interpretation. Preparation error runs in both directions here: the candidate who treats the ILE as the whole Ohio examination arrives unprepared for two further components, and the candidate who treats Ohio law study as a substitute for the core science fails the largest written paper on the route. The ILE is one component of three, and it is prepared for as exactly that.
Component 2: The Ohio laws and rules written examination
Ohio examines its own law in its own paper, and the syllabus is the chapter itself read as a working document. Chapter 4747 supplies the definitions and the scope of practice in section 4747.01, the prohibition on unlicensed practice in section 4747.02, the license application standard in section 4747.05, renewal and continuing education in section 4747.06, display in section 4747.07, the examination mandate in section 4747.08, the receipt and the child-referral duty in section 4747.09, the Trainee Permit in section 4747.10, address notification in section 4747.11, the disciplinary grounds in section 4747.12, prohibited acts in section 4747.14, and the exemptions in section 4747.15 — with the Board’s rules in Ohio Administrative Code Chapter 4747-1 layered over them, including the continuing education composition rules. Two passages repay verbatim-level attention. Section 4747.09 requires the receipt for every person supplied with a hearing aid, and requires the licensee dealing with a child of sixteen or under to ascertain whether an otolaryngologist has examined the child and, where that examination has not taken place, to recommend it to the person legally responsible for the child’s custody and to state that recommendation on the Board-specified waiver. Section 4747.12’s disciplinary list is long and concrete — sale by fraud or misrepresentation, misleading advertising, advertising a model that responding purchasers cannot buy, using words such as “doctor” or “clinic” where they connote a medical profession the licensee does not hold, fitting or selling without first using the appropriate procedures and instruments, gross incompetence or negligence, practising under a false name, permitting another person to use the license, and violating the chapter or the Board’s rules — and it is examined as the enforceable standard it is, not as background colour.
Component 3: The IHS Practical Examination
The practical component exists because the statute’s territory is, in large part, a set of hand skills. Pure tone audiometry, speech audiometry, and masking are procedures: they have sequences, cross-checks, and failure modes that a written item can describe but only a performance can prove. Earmold impression technique ends in an object whose depth, detail, and safety can be inspected directly. The Board adopted the IHS Practical Examination effective August 1, 2024, replacing the practical examination the Board previously administered itself — a change with two practical consequences for candidates. First, preparation material describing the former board practical as the current requirement is out of date on the point that matters most. Second, the candidate now trains to a single national practical standard, the IHS standard, under the Board’s section 4747.08 authority — the same standard the written ILE comes from, which makes the written and practical components reinforce each other when preparation treats them as one syllabus performed two ways.
Why Ohio separates its law examination — and what that separation demands
One structural feature deserves a slower pass: Ohio could have folded its law into the national written paper, as some states fold law content into a combined examination, and it did not. A separate Ohio laws and rules examination means Ohio law is not a tail of items at the end of a science paper, sampled lightly and compensated by strength elsewhere; it is a component the candidate must pass in its own right, on the chapter and the rules as written. The preparation consequence is discipline about sources: Chapter 4747 and Chapter 4747-1 are short enough to read entire, more than once, and the candidate who has done so meets few surprises, because the examination’s authority and the candidate’s text are the same document. The professional consequence runs deeper. Ohio’s consumer-protection machinery — the receipt, the otolaryngologist referral for a child, the advertising prohibitions, the ban on fitting without first using the appropriate procedures and instruments — is the part of the license an Ohio client actually experiences, and the state examines it separately because it enforces it separately, through the disciplinary process in section 4747.12 and the complaint process in section 4747.13, under which any person may complain in writing within one year of the act complained of and the Board investigates alleged irregularities in the sale or practice of dealing in and fitting hearing aids.
A study plan built on how this examination is actually put together
Build the plan in the order the route compels it. First, the measurement core — physics of sound, ear anatomy and physiology, pure tone and speech audiometry, and masking, studied as procedures the candidate performs under supervision during training, with every threshold cross-checked the way the practical examiner will check it. Second, record-to-fitting fluency — audiogram recording and evaluation practised until the path from a completed record to a selection and adaptation decision is deliberate and explainable, because area (G) is where the written and practical components meet. Third, the hands-on strand — earmold impressions taken repeatedly and judged as objects, alongside the audiometric sequences, so the practical is a demonstration of trained habit rather than a first performance under pressure. Fourth, Ohio law as its own paper — Chapter 4747 and the Board’s rules read entire, with the receipt, referral, advertising, discipline, renewal, and continuing education provisions worked as applied scenarios: what does the licensee hand the client, say to the parent, print in the advertisement, and file by December 31. Fifth, timed mixed written practice across the ILE territory and the Ohio material together, because the route interleaves two authorities’ papers and rewards the candidate who can change register — national science to Ohio statute — without losing accuracy in either.
The working method: turning the outline into a performance
Preparation fails most often as a supervision problem disguised as a knowledge problem: the trainee spends the permit year selling alongside a supervisor without ever converting that experience into examined technique. The working method that answers it has four parts. Perform the procedures weekly, on the record. Pure tone, speech, and masking sequences run to a written protocol, with results logged and discrepancies resolved to the step that caused them. An error log keyed to the statute. Every missed practice item and every botched procedure is filed by section 4747.08 area — (A) through (H) — and by component, so after a month the log, not the candidate’s confidence, assigns the remaining study. Read the chapter as the examiner reads it. One full pass through Chapter 4747 and the Board’s rules each month of preparation, with the operative duties extracted into a one-page working list the candidate can recite. Respect the permit clock. The one-year permit, renewable once, is the outer frame of the whole preparation; components are scheduled inside it deliberately, earliest weakness first, so no component is ever being prepared against an expiring authorization.
The errors this examination is built to catch
The Ohio route catches a recognisable set. Preparing for the ILE alone concedes two of the three components — the Ohio laws and rules examination and the practical — to chance. Treating the Trainee Permit as the credential misreads the tier: the permit authorizes supervised training only, expires in a year, and renews once, and the license waits on the examination, not on time served. Studying audiometry as theory fails the practical wherever a sequence — masking decision, threshold cross-check, impression technique — must be performed rather than recognised. Skimming Ohio law fails the one paper whose entire content is a short, readable chapter the candidate was always able to read entire. Relying on pre-August 2024 practical descriptions prepares for a board practical Ohio no longer gives; the IHS Practical Examination is the current component. And assuming the audiologist exemption helps a fitter candidate misreads section 4747.15(C): the exemption belongs to audiologists licensed under Chapter 4753 and does not shorten the Chapter 4747 route by a single step.
The licenses in one view
The Ohio licenses in one view are a chain of custody for a measurement. The trainee learns, under supervision and against a one-year clock, to measure hearing honestly; the qualifying examination verifies that measurement three ways — nationally in writing, statutorily in writing, and practically in performance; and the license then obliges its holder to keep measuring honestly in public: receipt in the client’s hand, referral where a child has not been examined, license on the wall, address on file, twenty hours of continuing education in every two-year cycle, and a disciplinary code that names the exact failures — fraud, misleading claims, fitting without proper procedure — the examination was built to screen out. The candidate who studies the route as that single chain finds the components reinforcing each other: the science explains the audiogram, the audiogram explains the fitting, the fitting explains the receipt, and the chapter explains all of it.
After the examinations: the license and its clocks
The license begins on issuance and runs to December 31 of the following even-numbered year — or, where issued less than one hundred days before that date, to the December 31 of the next even-numbered year — and renewal then settles into the biennial rhythm: application, fee, and proof of twenty hours of Board-approved continuing education by December 31 of each even-numbered year, with at least two hours relating to ethics and, for a hearing aid fitter, at least ten hours specific to the measurement and testing of human hearing, the making of earmold impressions, or selecting and adapting hearing aids; no continuing education is required for the first renewal under Board rules. A licensee whose license has expired is not required to take any examination as a condition of renewal where renewal is sought within two years of expiry — a mercy with a hard edge, because beyond the chapter’s renewal mechanics the unlicensed-practice prohibition in section 4747.02 applies to practice on a lapsed license exactly as it applies to practice without one. The licensee who treats the two years as continuing practice — measuring, fitting, and keeping current with the Board’s rules as they amend — meets renewal as a formality. The licensee who treats the license as a finished event meets it as a deadline.
Frequently asked questions
Which Ohio law governs hearing aid dealer and fitter licensure?
Ohio Revised Code Chapter 4747, administered by the State Speech and Hearing Professionals Board, with the Board’s rules in Ohio Administrative Code Chapter 4747-1.
What are the three components of the Ohio qualifying examination?
The written International Licensing Examination (ILE) administered by the International Hearing Society (IHS); the Board’s written Ohio laws and rules examination; and the IHS Practical Examination, adopted by the Board effective August 1, 2024, in place of the Board’s own practical examination. Section 4747.08 requires the qualifying examination to consist of written and practical portions, and no license issues without passage.
Why did the practical examination change in 2024?
The Board adopted the IHS Practical Examination effective August 1, 2024, replacing its own practical. Board newsletters record the adoption; candidates preparing from material that still describes a board-administered practical as current should update that point.
What must the Trainee Permit applicant show?
Under section 4747.10: at least eighteen years of age, a diploma from an accredited high school or a certificate of high school equivalence, and freedom from contagious or infectious disease, on a properly completed application with the Board’s fee. The permit then authorizes supervised practice only, expires in one year, and may be renewed once.
Can a trainee practise without supervision?
No. Section 4747.10 provides that no person holding a trainee permit shall engage in the practice of dealing in or fitting of hearing aids except while under supervision by a licensed hearing aid dealer or fitter.
Does Ohio require a medical or surgical education for this license?
No — section 4747.08 provides the opposite: the qualifying examination tests the knowledge required for the proper selecting, fitting, and sale of hearing aids, but shall not be such that a medical or surgical education is required for successful completion.
What continuing education does renewal require?
Not less than twenty hours of Board-approved continuing professional education in each two-year period, certified at renewal; Board rules require at least two hours relating to ethics and, for a hearing aid fitter, at least ten hours specific to hearing measurement and testing, earmold impressions, or selecting and adapting hearing aids, and excuse the requirement for the first renewal. Education provided or certified by the International Hearing Society, the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association, or the American Academy of Audiology may be applied toward the requirement.
What happens if the license expires?
Renewal is biennial by December 31 of each even-numbered year. A person who applies for renewal of an expired license is not required to take any examination as a condition of renewal where the application is made within two years of the date the license expired.
What are the licensee’s duties to a child of sixteen or under?
Under section 4747.09, the licensee must ascertain whether the child has been examined by an otolaryngologist before being fitted; if that examination has not taken place, the licensee must recommend to the person legally responsible for the child’s custody that it take place, and state that recommendation on the waiver the Board specifies.
Is PassProfessor affiliated with the Ohio Board or with IHS?
No. PassProfessor is an independent preparation provider. The State Speech and Hearing Professionals Board alone licenses hearing aid dealers and fitters in Ohio, and this program is not a Board or IHS course.
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 this page and PassProfessor will write to you when the program is ready — and only about this program.