Coronavirus: Lack of interpreter leads to campaign and possible legal action against Government

 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.

This week, Liam O’Dell follows one Deaf presenter’s campaign to make coronavirus briefings accessible to British Sign Language users.

It’s around 1:26am on Wednesday 15 April when over 16,000 people get the message they’ve been waiting for.

Just three weeks ago, an online petition calling for emergency announcements to come with British Sign Language interpretation reached the 10,000 signatures needed for a reply from the Government.

Today, at an unusual hour, the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport published its reply.

“The Government is engaging with broadcasters on ensuring accessibility provisions are available for COVID-19 emergency announcements,” it reads. “We support the BBC’s enhanced signing measures as of 23 March.

“The Government is committed to building a digitally inclusive society, and aims to ensure that COVID-19 media announcements are accessible for all UK audiences. As broadcasters are independent from the Government, they are responsible for their signing resources.”

The statement continues to say that Ofcom enforces statutory targets around signed content and that they “continue to engage” with broadcasters about “including signing provisions in future announcements to ensure that information is accessible” and “developing accessibility provisions” which adhere to rules on social distancing.

“Also, the Government publishes press conference statements on the Government website which can be accessed at: www.gov.uk/coronavirus along with the latest guidance and information,” the response adds.

This wasn’t the first time they addressed these concerns, either. A letter surfaced online at the start of April from the Government to Conservative MP Matt Vickers, who contacted Downing Street on behalf of a constituent.

The messaging wasn’t too dissimilar.

“The Government is committed to ensuring deaf people can fully participate and play a full role in society,” Chris Jennings, Head of Direct Communications at the Cabinet Office, writes. “We support initiatives aimed at improving understanding of the needs of deaf people and how the barriers they face can be removed, as well as giving deaf people more say in how they access services.”

“As you are aware, we worked with the BBC to introduce a British Sign Language (BSL) interpreter on Monday 16 March to accompany the Prime Minister’s daily coronavirus press conference. The BSL interpreter is available on the BBC News Channel and BBC iPlayer.”

The constituent in question was prompted to contact their MP following tweets from Deaf presenter Lynn Stewart-Taylor. The campaigner had been raising the issue online via the hashtag, #WhereIsTheInterpreter.

“This is a life and death situation. It’s making me very anxious,” Lynn tells Ahmed Khalifa’s Hear Me Out [CC] podcast. “I’ve not been able to get full access to information to know how to protect myself and how to protect others.

“We’re really experiencing a lack of access to information on our own language. There are 87,000, possibly more, BSL-using people in the UK and lots of us are experiencing frustrations.

“That’s making our anxieties worse, it’s affecting our mental health.”

Other organisations soon joined the campaign, including the Association of Sign Language Interpreters (ASLI) and the National Registers of Communication Professionals working with Deaf and Deafblind People (NRCPD) as well as this site.

While the Government introduced a BSL interpreter on the BBC News channel in mid-March, just one week later, one key announcement from the Prime Minister came without interpretation.

“We will stop all gatherings of more than two people in public – excluding people you live with,” said Boris Johnson, in a direct address to the nation. “We will stop all social events, including weddings, baptisms, and other ceremonies, but excluding funerals.”

The news of an anticipated lockdown had come, but with no BSL interpreter on screen, information about the new measures and police powers were inaccessible to Deaf people.

A call to action followed two days after on 25 March, stating that an interpreter is required “so that more than 80,000 Deaf people living in the United Kingdom, who use British Sign Language, are aware of the evolving situation and what is expected of them to protect themselves and others”.

Later that same day, the same hashtag, #WhereIsTheInterpreter, trended in the UK on Twitter. More than 3,000 tweets were sent around the campaign. MPs confirmed they had written to the Prime Minister on the issue.

One peer raised it in the House of Lords in March, to be told by Conservative Lord Bethell that an interpreter was provided for that day’s briefing, but “there are a large number of groups who deserve special treatment”

“I cannot pretend that there are going to be tailored packages for each and every vulnerable group in the land,” he said.

At the start of April, the World Health Organisation released guidance which said that, where possible, sign language should be provided “for all live and recorded events and communications”.

It isn’t the only guidance which has not been followed by the UK Government. Campaigners have also highlighted its obligations under the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and the Equality Act.

Both are cited in an online fundraiser launched at the start of April. The group behind the #WhereIsTheInterpreter campaign are now looking to take legal action.

A statement on the webpage reads: “After weeks of campaigning on this without any real response from the Government we have engaged the legal team, Fry Law, who are supporting ‘AK’ by launching a Judicial Review application for breach of the Equality Act, Human Right Act and the UNCRPD, in the hope that the Court will order the government to provide an Interpreter.

“We are raising £10,000.00 initially to get the legal challenge off the ground and may well need to raise more as the action continues. We’ll keep you updated as the legal action develops.”

At the time of writing, over £3,000 has been raised, with the crowdfunder running for another 20 days.

The fight against coronavirus has been described as a “national effort” by government officials, but for some Deaf people, they continue to feel excluded from essential public health announcements. The question of ‘where is the interpreter’ remains unanswered.

Photo: Lynn Stewart-Taylor.

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.

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Read the previous four reports in this series, on how the pandemic affects British Sign Language interpreters, deaf university students, deaf mental health and charities online now.