Welcome to The Limping Chicken!

Welcome to The Limping Chicken, a brand-new website offering news, features and opinion on deaf issues and culture in the UK! As well as producing its own content, The Limping Chicken aims to help you find the most interesting, informative and thought-provoking deaf blogs, news and entertainment on the web.

As it develops, The Limping Chicken will aim to:

• Reflect the variety behind the deaf experience
• Highlight the great work of talented deafies across the country
• Inform both our deaf and non-deaf readers about deaf culture and deaf awareness
• Focus and reflect on issues affecting deaf people
• Host a variety of viewpoints, and become a forum for debate.

This site is deaf-produced and editorially independent.

Why the name?

Earlier this month, BBC3 broadcast a documentary about five deaf teenagers. In one scene, a university notetaker told a deaf student that she couldn’t take notes for the whole lecture because “my chicken is ill.”

The notetaker’s only fault was being too honest (read this blog in her defence) but nevertheless, those words sparked an online craze in the deaf world, with social networking sites being overrun by jokes, spoof images and tribute videos about her chicken within just a few hours of the programme going out.

Those words hit a nerve because they reminded deaf people everywhere of both how random and frustrating deaf life can be. ‘Chickengate’ not only revealed the common ground deafies share, but also just how connected we are online. So this site was named in the chicken’s honour. Let’s hope its trip to the vet was successful.

Who produces this site?

The Limping Chicken is edited by partially-deaf journalist and scriptwriter Charlie Swinbourne, who has written for The Guardian and BBC Online about deaf culture, as well as contributing to programmes on television and radio. He has also written award-winning dramas featuring deaf characters. Here’s his personal website.

Can I contribute to the site?

The aim of the site is to bring different views together, and we’re aiming to feature a variety of deaf and hearing writers with different experiences! So if you have something to say, or a story you’d like to tell, just get in touch!

How can I contact you?

To contact us, just email thelimpingchicken@gmail.com. We’re very friendly!

Who are you sponsored by?

The Limping Chicken is supported by deaf training and consultancy company Deafworks.

They’re very friendly people (we have to say that, but luckily it’s true). For more information about the services they provide, go to their website, deafworks.co.uk