The Question: Can Deaf Awareness be taught?

I think it’s a bit of both or “all of the above”.

I think there are some people who are just able to get it right, I don’t know if they pragmatically work it out, or just have luck and are perceptive enough to keep improving the rightness. I know blind people like John Hull (a blind professor who wrote a book) say the same about blind-awareness. My partner is one of those pragmatic types, she thought I had a CI at first and although she wasn’t 100% right, treating me as if I might be deaf was a good start.

Some people know the right things to do but aren’t very good at remembering. I think sometimes cos they get complacent which is the attitude I sometimes see at ENT and audiology – where there’s a sort of “everyone’s deaf” burned out boredness about it all. This drives me particularly nuts because I work in general disability and I know I don’t get it right all the time, but I keep trying! If you make a mistake, apologise, fix it, don’t do it again. Reserve some brain for checking the person you’re dealing with is following you.

Some people are better with practice and ongoing exposure. I realise how good most of my colleagues are when I see them switch from a conversation which I’m not part of to one I become part of, say when I join a room. I’ve had occasions where they keep speaking to me like they do to one another and I’m like “huh? what?!” and they quickly switch into barakta-mode and I can suddenly understand them again – I get the same with family sometimes. I think the main difference is facing me, speaking slightly slower and slightly louder than they might usually speak to one another and possibly even better contextualisation. My mum is another one who is often good but when we’ve not seen one another for weeks she can forget – she says she forgets how deaf I am until I come home and she remembers she can’t talk to me like she does my hearing sister who she sees a lot more often.

I think it’s much like my experience with blind people, I’ve known some blind people all my life but I think as a child I couldn’t understand how they knew things because hearing seemed such an inaccurate and useless sense to me. As an adult I am more aware that hearing is more useful for hearies and those who can learn to use it. I have now worked for 5 years very closely with two blind people and I worked very hard to “get it right” by Googling for “howtos” such as guiding (which I hate cos it is very difficult and tiring with my bad balance for me) as well as asking the two blind people I work with “How should I do X best do you think?” with a definite awareness that these two people are very different so what worked for one wasn’t always what worked for the other – the best thing to do was ask.

I think a lot of ‘general’ deaf awareness like anything is being observant, providing information succinctly and asking discreet questions where appropriate. So if I meet someone who has a folded cane I will ask “Can you see me well enough to follow me, or would you prefer one of my arms for guiding?” I am aware of things like lighting levels which mean I may need to provide audio description of directions through some of the poorer lit parts of my workplace etc. This isn’t magic, I haven’t got the intuition, I am working at it and I do see myself getting better as well as being able to observe other people doing things rightly or wrongly.

I think in many ways the primary purpose in deaf awareness training if it’s not being done as a ticky box exercise is to get people to realise they need to care and then give them the tools with which they can do it right – it’s then ultimately up to them.

I am a little more old school about this subject. I think all people can change. But there are several problems:
1. Deaf awareness trainers don’t have the ‘training’ skills to facilitate change. Do they impart information? Or do they challenge behaviours? Change is more likely to take place when they can safely and accurately alter their practice and receive a positive response when they do so.

2. Deaf awareness materials are often prescriptive and respond to an ‘imagined’ deaf person – do not deal with real situations. So the materials on offer are often generalist, reductionist and try to cover too many bases. There are very few materials about that actually focus on facilitating changes in behaviours – except for practicing lipreading and learning a few signs.

3. People don’t change unless they have a good reason to do so. Unless you make each person aware of why they need to change, the information will be forgotten. If you are talking to doctors, start talking about the potential harm they can inflict on their patients (there is enough evidence of this). The same goes for teachers, parents, community workers, etc. – they need to hear, see and understand the impact of their old behaviours and the benefits of the new ones.

4. The deaf awareness needs to be brought home to real situations, where it is needed. For example, where a deaf patient is in hospital, a student in a school or an employee in the workplace. This is where deaf awareness sessions really matter because they can be applied the following day and the deaf employee/patient/student can help support the change. This helps the session to come away from generalist statements that are not useful and strategies to resolve real issues, which are.

I think most people can change but they won’t do anything unless they have a motivation to do so. To coin an Italian idiom, “needs makes an old person leap”. So, why don’t we get them leaping!

I am a hearing person I also teach taekwondo and have a hard of hearing dad this combination led me to wonder how i would teach deaf people so I went on a sports council deaf awareness course and it opened my eyes to a whole new world as i do not know any deaf people,i wanted to learn more so a basic course in BSL i was shocked to see the woman sent to assess our tutor was standing by her side asking her questions while our tutor who is 70% deaf was on the computer,I never want to be that ignorant and thanks to the great programmes on BSL zone and limping chicken i am learning.There is a deaf club near me but I feel very selfconcious,my life will never be on the line because I want to spend a night in a hotel that would knock on my door because I cant hear the firealarm and all the annoying things deaf people have to put up with but I would like to do my bit to change things and wish there was an inbetweeners club for those of us who would like to be better at BSL but know they are rubbish.

Hello Charlie

A very thought provoking comment piece!

I think that deaf awareness can be taught – but that teaching deaf awareness is skills-based not knowledge based. Some have more aptitude but with the right corrective advice and enough personal effort, most people have the capacity to get it right.

Someone spoke about empathy – and I think this is absolutely spot on. Do I think empathy can be taught? Yes, I do – it’s a skill and can be learnt. But unfortunately in Britain we very rarely focus on skills-based learning, and when we do it happens fairly late on in life. Emotional intelligence and empathy are just as important as intellectual intelligence and empathy – that helps in tackling a number of barriers, not just barriers to deaf awareness/access.

I have given numerous Deaf Awareness presentations to mostly school and college classes.

I agree with John David Walker. Deaf Awareness is not all about communicating appropriately with deaf persons. This aspect is minor. It is learning about being a human – differently – about a distinct and global culture that the inability to hear has created. No other physical difference has provided such a cultural outcome.

This aspect of culture is what needs to be explored in a Deaf Awareness program with the implicit message that being Deaf is good, and to be welcomed and cherished by the society. That helps to minimize the social audism.

The above suggestions of alternative communication approaches are only ad-hoc solutions. and smack helplessness. I am surprised to see writing back and forth or using the manual alphabet not mentioned above.

I wonder, if you do the simulation game “It’s a Deaf, Deaf World”. Hearing people enters an environment, where no one speaks and hears, and they need to negotiate by various non-speaking means, dealing with banks, public services, restaurants, TV news in voiceless signs, etc. Speaking is punishable with a jail term of five minutes (a corner of the room is roped up as a jail with one or two chairs and a Deaf jailer). Participants collect points from stations visited and receive prizes. At the end after about 3 or 4 hours, for about 30 minutes, participants share their experiences.

In my Deaf Awareness (between 1 and 4 hrs), I touch upon themes of Deaf Experience, sign language (how it principally differs from a spoken language), poetic elements in sign language, Deaf humor, Deaf stories (f.e. The Myth of Becoming Hearing), etc.

So Deaf Awareness needs to be redirected away from the Ear and Speech as the primary means of communication. It is knowing and understanding of an unfamiliar way of life.

I’m with John on this one …. I am no fan of the bog standard delivery of ‘deaf awareness’ which seem mostly about facts and figures and which are somewhat removed from the real issues in hand…. Little of a curriculum that seems most in use is customised or adjusted to suit the group being taught. I don’t care for the title of ‘Deaf Awareness’ either… Especially for the accompanying sign that has developed with it…. (The move away from the sign ‘understand’ to the sign ‘know’ is ludicrous in condoning that one can ‘know’ about deafness rather than be ‘aware’ after a mere couple of hours or even, whoo!, a whole day’s training!)

I have delivered since the mid-1980s, singly or jointly with my colleague Ruth Roberts, courses called ‘An introduction to ….’ And in this way, simply by using these very words, participants are not misled as to the fact that there is much to learn, understand and discover. The title lends itself also to the way in which the courses are customised in relation to the Deaf person/people these courses were designed to increase awareness about. So, to use the author above as an example, such a course would be called ‘An introduction to Charlie Swinbourne’. Prior to the course, we’d have met with Charlie at his workplace, the stuff to cover, his experiences of his ‘unaware’ colleagues, changes he’d like to see and always, always, in context, with humour and with Charlie attending (and all of the content of the course interpreted as well) so that he knew what was being said by us, his colleagues and was also able to chip in as well. ‘charlie’ also got to know what irritated or confused his colleagues about him…. (eg. how he could sometimes and not at ofhers) Such courses were delivered across the greater London region for the GLC and ILEA. The courses were relevant to all and we did follow-ups too (in the workplace) checking out how things were going … We didn’t ignore the wider stuff about deafness/Deaf people as ‘Charlie’ had to be put in context and, as a Deaf person co-delivering the training, my experiences would be very different to Charlie’s so yes, we covered the ‘same but different’ range and experiences of D/deafness. And we introduced ‘Charlie’ to stuff his hearing colleagues wanted him to know about too …

Of course, for those courses I was/am booked to deliver ‘generic’ training, they would still be customised to the group, workplace, organisation, hospital or specific area of interest. I was appalled to visit a course where the ‘Deaf’ trainer was just spouting from a standard curriculum leaving my hearing colleagues bored out of their tiny minds at the flat humourless delivery, weak interpreting, and complete disassociation from the reality and experiences of the 6/8 Deaf staff they worked with. From that point on, we said, never again and delivered the training in segments ourselves, which made it much more relevant and saved a fortune. We couldn’t stop the person bragging that they had taught to the ‘BBC’ nor could we undo all of the damage done but that person and their organisation was never booked by us again. Mind, they unwittingly turned the ‘terrorist principle’ against themselves….. But if the organisation’s name or the trainer’s name ever came up, I did not (and still do not) hesitate to say “Save your money” and tell them why.

It takes so little effort to really think about what would work and to modify the training and content accordingly. The results are better too. After delivering courses around various people and topics such as ‘Introduction to British Sign Language….’, ‘Introduction to Barclay’s Bank….’ (Always a hit to address stuff of the organisation the people work for!), I’ve met some of those people years later who still remember the key points that were being put across…. Perhaps the issue here is as much to do with the trainers and their abilities? And maybe we should really question why people deliver a curriculum that is antiquated and simply a money earner for the organisation which sells it and conducts ‘examinations’ (more income!) to test same. Neither, as Charlie writes, allow people to put themselves in the other’s shoes and that’s what such a shame …. The wasted opportunity for real ‘deaf awareness’, often for people who genuinely want to learn and understand.