Deaf people have voiced their frustration after a video surfaced on social media showing a hearing son having to interpret a phone call on his Deaf father’s behalf.
The clip, posted to Twitter and TikTok by Emma Kostick, saw brother Daniel sign a conversation with insurance company Aviva for father, Neil.
Emma told The Limping Chicken that the call was due to a leak in their upstairs bathroom, with the water damaging the ceiling of their kitchen downstairs.
“Prior to this phone call, Daniel called requesting to speak on behalf of my Dad, but this request was refused initially.
“They said it would only be possible if my Dad verbally confirmed, which we wanted to avoid, or if my Dad sent them an email approving this,” she said.
Upon sending the email, the family received a response from home insurance provider Quote Me Happy (a trade name for Aviva) to say Daniel had “full permission” to discuss the issue on the phone.
However, upon calling them back, he was refused the opportunity to do so, with Quote Me Happy telling them over email that their claims department does not have access to notes held by customer services.
The family were later forced to have a conversation with Aviva over the phone, in a call which took 40 minutes.
A humiliating, yet regular occurrence: my Dad who is Deaf, being asked to speak to a person on a phone he cannot hear, to confirm his hearing son can help him.
please RT to raise #DeafAwareness – if you are in a company where this is policy, please address it.#Deaf pic.twitter.com/ZbcuCmb2EZ
— Emma’s Ditto (@emmasditto) November 21, 2020
Emma continued: “My Dad is independent and perfectly capable of handling this himself. He has travelled the world alone, he has worked his entire life, et cetera, yet his in situations such as this he is degraded and humiliated.
“Furthermore, my brother usually lives at University and I am hoping to move out soon. It’s something he shouldn’t have to worry about.”
Since posting, the clip has gone on to receive over 19,000 views on Twitter, with a further 81,000 on TikTok.
When asked about what the response to the video has been like, Emma said it is “disappointing”.
“Although a vast majority of people have been understanding, there has been a number of unnecessary and frankly ableist comments.
“The most frustrating responses have been ‘there’s nothing wrong with this’ and ‘it’s not safe to use an interpreter service”.
“Ultimately, if the Equality Commission advises that refusing to take calls involving a third party from disabled people would be likely to be a breach of the Equality Act, then it is not for uneducated hearing people to make comments on,” she said.
In online guidance from the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC), the watchdog warns that policies which mean they reject calls from disabled people through a third party “could amount to indirect discrimination”, as its use is “likely to be a reasonable adjustment”.
Emma went on to add that the interaction made her feel angry.
She said: “The ignorance infuriates me and I don’t have any patience for it. I hate watching my Dad speak down the phone.
“It’s unjust and unnecessary as I know there are other, better ways to do this, such as a live chat or a text relay service.”
The family went on to express that they were unhappy with the service they had received from the company, and were told that Aviva would have accepted a conversation over text relay as an alternative.
“We are still unsure of their policies as this contradicts their last email, that they would need verbal permission.
“It is clear to us the person did not know what the procedure was for a Deaf person and more training is needed,” Emma said.
The Limping Chicken has contacted Aviva for comment.
Update: In a statement to The Limping Chicken, a spokesperson Aviva said the company is “committed” to supporting customers “in the best and most appropriate way that we can”, and aim to be “flexible and sensitive” when responding to their needs.
“We are sorry that in this particular case we did not manage the communications and the call with our customer as well as we should have done.
“Where we have got it wrong we will always put it right as quickly as we can and we will be in touch with this customer and their family to apologise for the frustration this matter has caused,” they said.
The spokesperson went on to add that employees receive regular training to help provide additional support to customers who need it, with further training put in place where required.
They also said that customers are provided with “a number of communication options” when contacting the company “to suit their preferences”.
They continued: “Our training also enables employees to make adjustments to our usual processes to allow them to have a good conversation in what can sometimes be difficult circumstances.
“There are a number of other ways in which we work to ensure our employees are well equipped to deal with situations such as this one and once again we are sorry that the service provided was not what it should have been in this case.”
By Liam O’Dell. Liam is a mildly deaf freelance journalist and campaigner 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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Roger Charles Hankey
November 27, 2020
I empathise with the situation. I am fortunate I have a cochlear implant that works fine (along with lip reading etc..) in face-to face but it doesn’t work as well on phones (especially mobiles) so I revert to my old landline geomarc amplified handset: in extremis!. But even that is a struggle. So I say – I am deaf, please deal with me by text, I still get phone calls from people ignoring my request or even being forced to phone companies because they have no text based communication method. I can manage on good phone lines, with advance warning, with people talking on phones with ‘proper handsets’, no background noise, reasonable accents AND slowing down a bit and speaking clearly. But that is VERY few (compliments to Scottish Power Customer Services – they are GREAT on the phone!). Yesterday with an estate agent, despite my request I had a long stressful call with someone who spoke fast and angrily on a complex matter. The details are irrelevant – I also have had the ‘can’t you get a member of your family to phone’ response – yes I am 72 and deaf but I am an ex professional engineer, senior civil servant and someone – who without my cochlear implant – travelled the world as a trainer – so now I am supposed to ‘get a family member to phone – bloody patronising! So many organisations private and public sector ONLY want to deal on the phone – including my Doctors Surgery. Some companies who say – send us an email – then don’t respond – probably because I explain – DEAF, don’t phone me – use text. Others who actually refuse to talk through a third party, AND others who say – we only talk to customers on the phone!
Ok RANT over, but seriously the Equalities Act isn’t working for Deaf people partly because of the continuing and growing focus on Customer Service call centres and ignorance. Some will even not answer a snail mail letter.
We need some ENFORCEMENT of the Act not just advice!
Penelope Beschizza
November 29, 2020
Absolutely agreed.
Yes.
100% Enforcement is the key.
More so, the inclusion of Equality Act-aware + compliance people actively employed within all levels of hierarchy within DWP, all Gov Depts & more.
Penelope Beschizza
November 27, 2020
35 years ago – 1985 – I’d never forget my mum’s joy of having her profoundly deaf daughter being able to phone directly to her via Typetalk. To her it meant I don’t have to ask my infant son to call on my behalf.
The tragedy is the decade-long non-compliance of so-called leadership & its supposed respect for the Equality Act as well as well-documented good practice in ‘reasonable adjustment’ for us Deafies.
The family in the article are to be applauded for their transparency & honesty in the process – in some cases, we know other hearing children had to pretend to be their deaf parent to avoid needless hassle.
Hartmut
November 27, 2020
Relying wholly on the Equality Act is insufficient. It requires restructuring the economical system in how to provide this equality, which needs assistance from government by legislation and regulations on how to implement it, including public funding at least at the beginning. It means building a new infrastructure in the economy and society for its implementation, as indicated as follows:
1) mandating school systems and universities to offer education in sign language as first language for deaf children and as second language for hearing people to learn the same;
2) institute a systematic training opportunities for sign language interpreters, like they do for training of teachers and social workers;
3) mandating service providers, be it government at all levels or the private business world and treat the costs of the service as a normal tax deductible expenses for production and services, that is, as a normal line item in their budgets. Vide Remote Interpreter services can be used as a consultative basis to businesses and government on face-to-face basis (where no telephone is usually not used), for example in doctor’s lawyer’s offices;
4) creation of a Video Relay services, funded by a small surcharges on all telephone bills
5) placing sign language interpretation on TV presentations in programs that relies heavily on talking like in news shows, press conferences, talk shows, comedy talks, etc,;
6) high quality subtitles/captioning on every TV entertainment shows, where sign language interpretation cannot be placed on the screen;
So the Equality Act is no magic wand to provide equality for all deaf and hard of hearing members of the society.
Vera
November 28, 2020
I’m very like Roger Charles Hankey. I have a CI, I can manage some phone calls but not others, and almost never call centres. Every so often the utterly illogical and downright discriminatory reactions of these centres make me want to scream. T’other day, I had a minor problem to sort out with Tesco. They’d cancelled my husband’s club card and given him a new one so our “points” were no longer being amalgamated. (I know, how minor is that? But I wanted to sort it out). I emailed them and they accepted it was their fault, but needed to speak to each of us on the phone. OK. Seemed illogical but what the heck. I rang on Text Relay only to be told they needed to speak to both of us SIMULTANEOUSLY. Since I was deaf, though, they would accept my husband making the phone call then passing me the phone so I could say that I agreed. But, I said, you’ve accepted it was your mistake in writing in an email and you are speaking to me now. Why isn’t that enough? The only response, oft repeated, was “data protection”. Words are inadequate to explain the sheer, ridiculous stupidity of it all.
Fred Trull
November 30, 2020
I would like to explain to everyone for all time : The Equality Act 2010 has overriding priority over all other laws.
Don’t be fobbed off by these people making excuses about the Data Protection Act. It has nothing to do with data protection and everything to do with disability access.
I always challenge these people, the last one was TalkTalk who were so ignorant that I took them to the Ombudsman and got an apology. I took the opportunity to explain to their managing director just how bad their attitude was.
Alison
December 1, 2020
Would be nice to get the Deaf person’s point of view.
claire cheskin
December 5, 2020
I have to use my partner to talk to my bank. This situation should never arise.