I think it's clearly a lack of education. I don't think it's a lack of empathy, but people just don't understand the difference between conversational disfluency and a pathological speech disability. That is clearly a lack of education. Everyone knows what hard of hearing people are, and recognizes those people are disabled. Yet, everyone has had occasional moments where they couldn't hear something well enough. People are more educated about HOH people and that's the difference.