Sannah Gulamani: Remote Working: the impact on deaf people (with BSL video)

The coronavirus pandemic has sparked a global move to working online from home. 

For some, this meant having to juggle home commitments, home schooling, dealing with intermittent bandwidth connection, online fatigue, reduced or lack of interactions and social work events, working with limitations of space – navigating boundaries with work and living space and other occupants and lone working.

To watch Sannah signing her article, click play below, or scroll down to read on in English.

For others, they have been able to schedule in other activities amongst working, save time on commute and be able to be in an environment where they are fully in control with (e.g. access, lighting etc).

There have been many adjustments aimed at facilitating a home working environment with all meetings and trainings held online.

Different platforms have been tried and tested. What may have been recommended by employers as to what platform(s) should be used, is not always fully accommodating of deaf colleagues. In addition, many video platforms seem to have limited or undeveloped functionalities for incorporating mixed modalities (e.g. sign language + spoken language), have live autocaption features that are not accurate enough, and/or have restrictions as to who can access live auto-captions (e.g. Microsoft Teams).

Platforms sometimes are costly and require an additional paid platform to maximise functionalities (e.g. Zoom with Otter.ai to cater for video quality with transcripts/captions). Further, how platforms are set up and the flexibility of being able to reduce background audible noise, visual clutter and emphasise effective turn-taking can support those to lessen visual constraints and fatigue. 

At the beginning of the pandemic, DCAL, the Deafness Cognition Language Research Centre at University College London, like many other organisations, were trying to get to grips with the shift to online working and online behaviour.

In response to this, we created remote working guidelines for online meetings involving sign language – aimed at deaf and hearing people and interpreters. These guidelines continue to be revisited and updated. Below, we have detailed parts of the guidelines and offered advice and solutions to support working online with ease.

Our main advice is to appoint designated persons to be visible on camera (i.e. chair & ‘active’ interpreter). Everyone else should be muted and cameras off.

If a person wants to contribute they signify by turning their camera on, but wait for the chair to invite you to start contributing.

There are some adjustments required to how face-to-face communication operates. During meetings, there is a lot of hypervigilance as to detecting back channelling contributions, clarifying who is referring to who (e.g. more use of names than pointing), pinning contributors, rearranging videos, utilising the chat function and the technical demands to navigate all of this causing additional lag.

Delays in relaying from BSL to English and from English to BSL means that Deaf BSL users often fall behind in receiving information. To ensure inclusive practice, effective turn-taking and appointing a chair to manage this improves equal contributions.

We also advise that unless you are a deaf sign language user, to use spoken English when online. This can be challenging as it results in less use of BSL in meetings (so less direct communication between Deaf and hearing people who would normally sign with each other) but it makes modality switching easier and frees up bandwidth.

It is also important to reinforce more regular eye-breaks. Further, online platforms have limited support for interpreters and their co-worker(s) in terms of being able to give feedback. In a face to face context, interpreters would be able to feedback or support discreetly through signing or whispering to their co-worker(s). This isn’t possible in a single platform, so interpreters sometimes require an additional platform just for themselves so that they can provide support to one another during online meetings.

What’s also missed from a face to face work environment is the smaller informal interactions that happen before or after meetings or in breaks. The “deaf long goodbye”* doesn’t exist on online platforms.

There also tend to be a brief few silent minutes at the beginning of the meeting whilst everyone gets their set-up organised and the meeting commences when there are ‘ready’ faces (e.g. smiling at camera).

Though this depends on whether people initially join the meeting with their camera on or off. With cameras off, other ways of providing feedback are needed (e.g. chat or reactions). It appears that there is a lack of, or still developing norms for certain social interactions in online meetings.

These guidelines have been extremely successful and implemented across the UK and also other countries such as Australia and the United States. Feedback has praised the reduction in fatigue and the increase in deaf contributions online.

We’ve all recognised how to empathise with different set ups, different ways of working and additional load and stresses on individuals. Further, this creation of remote working guidelines has proven the importance of deaf perspectives and the need to consider cultural and linguistic needs.

Deaf people in general are at higher risk of developing mental health problems and with regards to employment, are less likely to be employed and to progress at the same rate as their hearing counterparts.

Secondly, we must consider deaf people with other disabilities and how they may have different online needs. There must be a nationwide effort to ensure deaf people are not left out and deprioritised from services and employment adjusting to the pandemic.   

It’s clear that deaf people are early adopters and experts on video technology, and this is underappreciated by the general public. Virtual platforms would benefit from engaging with deaf people to learn how to design efficiently.

This knowledge can also be used to re-evaluate and improve communication skills and the delivery of information online and offline. Valuing the diversity of individuals and how they navigate situations would help shape a more inclusive environment.

DCAL’s Remote working guidelines: https://www.ucl.ac.uk/dcal/remote-working-guidelines

With thanks to DCAL colleagues for edits.

*The ‘deaf long goodbye’ is part of Deaf culture, where deaf people as they are saying goodbye to everyone individually in a social context tend to engage in a full-length conversation before leaving. This partly stems from lack of deaf interactions and opportunities to meet with other deaf people.