Coronavirus: The Deaf university students facing a lack of educational support

As the coronavirus pandemic continues, The Limping Chicken has been hearing from different members of the Deaf community about how the outbreak has affected them.

Here, Liam O’Dell finds out how Deaf university students have found their education impacted by the crisis.

“I’m not receiving any support at the moment as the interpreters and notetakers are unable to access online lectures, as the university has been unable to provide them access,” Amy Gair, a profoundly deaf student at Anglia Ruskin University, reveals to The Limping Chicken. “I feel like l’m going to fail my assignments because I’m not able to access online lectures.

“I tried to do [a lecture] without the interpreter on Monday […] but I didn’t fully understand it.”

Amy’s concerns follow most UK universities moving their courses online in response to the outbreak, with representative body Universities UK saying they are seeing a shift to “online teaching and learning” across the sector.

It follows government guidance for universities to remain open “unless [they] have been directly advised to close by the local Public Health England Health Protection Team.”

Last week Liverpool Hope University announced that all of its face-to-face teaching “will end for the rest of this academic year”.

The university later went on to close all of its buildings on Tuesday, including its three libraries.

Their Learning Support Team are still available from Monday to Friday, and “are able to provide email, telephone or video chat support sessions”.

Lucy Armstrong, a moderately deaf student in her second year of studying English Literature and Politics at the institution, says her classes are now virtual.

“The PowerPoints have speech over them now but my tutors provided me with a transcript,” she explains. “We use discussion boards to talk at our scheduled class time. I’m glad we’re not using video chat as I wouldn’t be able to keep up.”

Lucy adds that assistance from her 1:1 support worker has been increased to two hours for extra help. “[They now spend] two hours with me on FaceTime a week to read over work and help me edit,” she says, “as well as just have a chat about how things are going.”

However, Eleanor Halsall, a deaf Politics, International Studies and Spanish student at the University of Warwick, tells The Limping Chicken she is yet to be told what support will be in place for her exams.

“My departments are yet to come to final decisions on how we are going to be assessed so I don’t know whether my extra time will stand and how that is going to work,” she says, “especially if exams are done over a longer period of time – for example, 24 hours.”

Eleanor goes on to express concerns about her Spanish speaking exam in particular, saying she is worried that, if it goes ahead, it will be put into an inaccessible format.

“For example, if it was done via video facilities, there would be a lag, meaning I wouldn’t be able to lip read and follow what was being said.”

“I’m not expecting much from my uni in terms of accessibility now everything has moved online,” she continues. “I think there’s so much for them to consider that accessibility for deaf students is going to be easily forgotten.”

When approached by The Limping Chicken with Eleanor’s concerns, the University of Warwick said: “The [university] is continuing to develop plans so that all members of our community will be able to undertake any necessary Term 3 assessments.”

Anglia Ruskin University have also been contacted for comment.

By Liam O’Dell. Liam is a mildly deaf freelance journalist and blogger from Bedfordshire. He wears bilateral hearing aids and can be found talking about disability, theatre, politics and more on Twitter and on his website.

Read the first report in this series, on the concerns raised by British Sign Language interpreters, online now.

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Update: In a statement, Anglia Ruskin University told The Limping Chicken: “We are supporting each and every student during this difficult period in order that they can continue their learning online.

“We apologise to Amy for the problems she experienced earlier this week, and we can assure Amy, and our other deaf students, that notetakers now have access to all online teaching.”