FMCSA & FAQs

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Direct person contact to send HW application: 

• Email: 

                 Hearing Waiver Division
             FMCSAhearingexemptions@dot.gov

             (the application file has to be in PDF)

              or

• Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration
  1200 New Jersey Avenue, SE Washington, DC 20590 (W64-224)
  Main: 202 366-4001
  Fax: 877-764-6920
  9:00am-5:00 ET, M-F

• How can your CDL examiner communicate with you when you start the training and take a road test?
  •  Get a dry eraser board for your examiner to write down to tell you what to do and where to go.
  • Make sure you and your examiner feel comfortable before and during the road test. 
  • Or discuss what to do before start the exam.
• Hearing waiver cannot be used to drive a bus. 
• FMCSA Regulation #383.133 Test Method:
  • Interpreters are prohibited during the administration of skills tests (Pre-Trip and Road Exam). Applicants must be able to understand and respond to verbal commands and instructions in English by a skills test examiner. Neither the applicant nor the examiner may communicate in a language other than English during the skills test
• Cat Scale is a deaf friendly app to use for weigh paperwork.

Don Olds, an American Sign Language (ASL) CDL Instructor teaches students in Big Spring, Texas. To date, he had taught more than forty deaf students. 

Autumn Daniel is a certified CDL instructor and an ASL interpreter at Amarillo College in Amarillo, Texas. Interpreted since 2014 and assisted a dozen of deaf truck driver students

Free site to practice the CDL test before going for the real thing

Apply online for hearing exemption application (Note: timeframe to get the waiver is 3-6 months)

To find an opening CDL jobs

 Department of Transportation Information

 Hand Speak ASL Tutorial for those want to learn sign language 

 Search for the hearing exemptions in process