Rebecca A Withey: Deaf Awareness Week 2021 – The danger of Assumptions

Deaf Awareness Week is here, and with incredibly apt timing I find myself reflecting on a recent not-very-deaf-aware event.

Now that Covid restrictions are slowly lifting, I’m so pleased to be booked for more in-person consultancy work at theatres. Yay! It’s wonderful to be around other creatives instead of staring at a laptop screen for yet “another Zoom meeting.”

Anyhow, most of the time those booking my services are fully aware of the fact that I am deaf. This means we often discuss my own access needs before we begin a project. On occasion, however, I come across organisations that either,

1. Assume I’m a hearing interpreter or
2. Assume that despite being deaf I can still hear on the phone/work with audio/hear
3. Assume that this friend they know that can ‘sign a bit’ will be able to work with me.

It’s not very often this happens (thankfully!) but you’d be surprised by the ignorance sometimes. This brings me to the event I mentioned earlier. As it is deaf awareness week, I was recently approached by a school and asked whether I would go in to deliver sign song sessions and deaf awareness workshops.

This sounded great and I was really keen to deliver the work but here’s the catch – the school didn’t have the funds to pay me. Seeing as they wanted six hours of my time, I couldn’t justify the preparation/travel/hours lost to work for free. Would you ask a French teacher to go into a school and deliver a days work on a voluntary basis? Why should BSL be any different, I wonder.

Anyhow, after politely declining, I managed to source a colleague (also deaf) who lived locally to the school and was happy to volunteer their services for a couple of hours. Ah, brilliant! Problem solved, I thought! But no, the plot thickens.

It turns out that after revising their budget, the school no longer had the funds to pay for a BSL interpreter to support the deaf specialist who was offering their time. So not only did this deaf professional agree to go into the school for free, they were now being asked to work without any support.

I’ve since emailed the school to explain that actually reserving funds for BSL support on a Deaf Awareness Day (of all days!) when you’re planning for a deaf specialist to attend, should absolutely have been their number one priority.

You wouldn’t ask a person who uses a wheelchair to bring their own ramp to access a building, would you? Nor would you ask a visually impaired person to find their way alone around a new place!

The problem is that deaf people are far too often the victim of assumptions. People assume that we can make sense of what they’re saying. We ‘look’ like we can do okay without it.

Yet the assumption trap that this school have fallen into is a very dangerous one. They’ve assumed that:

1. BSL specialists will work for free
2. Deaf people don’t really need support, do they?

Here’s the truth.

Firstly, when you are booking a deaf sign language user to work with non-sign language users, it is your duty to provide a BSL interpreter. No ifs, or buts, or ways around it. Failing to do so is nothing but ignorant. A deaf person may be comfortable lipreading a hearing person in every day life, but to deliver work to a professional standard, full access to communication is required. This may be in the form of support such as a BSL interpreter, lip-speaker or even a note taker. It is your job to cater to the deaf persons needs.

Secondly, BSL specialists or Deaf Awareness Trainers are professionals and therefore their own communication needs cannot be supported by those who are not qualified/experienced BSL interpreters. Knowing a ‘bit of sign language’ does not make you a BSL interpreter. Professionals will be aware of jargon used in specialist areas and also have the knowledge and experience to relay information swiftly.

Finally, deaf specialists have likely honed their skills for years! Whether they are Deaf Awareness Trainers, Visual Vernacular artists, sign singers, actors, or BSL poets, they are artists in their own right and should not be expected to work for free. Schools or organisations can factor in their budget to pay for delivery of work by sports or music professionals so why should anything BSL/deaf related be any different?

In some cases it seems that ignorance happens because those involved aren’t aware of what’s actually appropriate practice. This is why we have Deaf Awareness Week; to share stories, spread awareness and highlight wrongs to pave the way for better times ahead.

I hope this article does its part to remind non-signing organisations that there is a way of going about things when working with deaf professionals. And if in doubt, ask a deaf person!

Wishing you all a very happy deaf awareness week!

Look out for new sign songs from me this week on my facebook page Rebecca A Withey, whoop! https://www.facebook.com/Rebecca-A-Withey-198730846959276