Non-verbal communication

Personal differences.

Any assumption about the prior knowledge on the subject matter fails for any reasonably large audience. Whatever you try to explain about the genetics of colors will be incomprehensible to most people, since they have a very vague idea of what "genes" are (in written communication you might just manage to distinguish them from Jeans), and "dominance" is just Greek or sex to them.

There are many factors in an individual’s personality, mentality, experience and environment which can cause distortion or noise in the communication process. For example,

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  Racial, ethnic or regional origins:
  
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  Religious beliefs and traditions.
  
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  Social class and socio-economic.
  
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  Education and training.
  
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  Age.
  
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  Sex.
  
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  Occupation
  
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  Personality traits and types- a wide range of characteristics which shape attitudes and behaviour: introvert/ extrovert, stable/neurotic, active/passive etc.
  
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  Intelligence- in terms of mental ability and understanding, linguistic or numerical ability.
  

Data Loss:

Just having some data lost. The listener does not pay attention at a critical moment, and he misses something indispensable. In the worst, and usual, case he does not know he missed it.