Deaf News: DCAL launch innovative online Deaf Awareness course

UCL’s Deafness, Cognition and Language (DCAL) Centre (a supporter of this site) have developed an innovative on-line short course, ‘Deaf Awareness: Working and Communicating Well with Deaf People’ to improve the way professionals engage with Deaf people and people with a hearing loss.

Deaf awareness is about promoting the positive aspects of deafness and social inclusion. The course is a unique opportunity for individuals and organisations to tap into the expertise of a globally recognised academic centre working on the communication of deaf people.

Learning is flexible, of a very high quality and will lead to a certificate of participation from UCL, one of the world’s leading universities.

Course content

The course starts by considering why deaf awareness is important. It moves on to provide different perspectives of deafness to enable participants to understand how deafness affects individuals.

It then looks back through history and considers how attitudes and policies have had an impact on deaf people. The section on Deaf culture and sign language gives insight in to unique communities who identify not as groups with a disability but as cultural minorities with their own languages.

The penultimate topic considers why equal access is important, addresses the effectiveness of lipreading, provides guidance on good communication and adjustments related to deafness. The final topic will equip individuals with information about commonly used communication support from qualified communication support professionals to technology, like real time speech-to-text.

Learners will be accompanied on their journey through the course by four people who share their experiences of being D/deaf and hard of hearing.

Who will benefit from attending the course? 

The course will contribute to the ongoing professional development of nurses, social workers, doctors, therapists, care staff, HR professionals, receptionists, dentists, university staff, people working in the hospitality or transport industry, contact centre staff and management, police, ambulance staff, firefighters and many others.

Participants of the course will enable organisations to be better equipped to:

• Meet the needs of deaf people and people with a hearing loss – this will improve customer and staff satisfaction and enable you better tap into huge potential market
• Reduce costs – your staff will be better equipped to deal with Deaf people or people with hearing loss reducing inefficiency and improving outcomes
• Meet statutory equality duties – many organisations have a statutory duty to ensure equal access for deaf people

The cost of the course is £119 per person with discounts for larger groups.

For more information please email dcal.da_course@ucl.ac.uk or visit www.ucl.ac.uk/lifelearning/courses/deaf-awareness-online-course-communicate-deaf-people