Research: Deaf university students’ struggles and benefits from the pandemic and online teaching (with BSL videos)

By Mette Sommer Lindsay, Rachel England, Chijioke Obasi and Jim McKechnie, the University of West Scotland

Are you a deaf or hard of hearing university student during the pandemic and want to take part in this research? 

Then spend 5-10 minutes on this survey:  https://deafstudents.questionpro.com  or contact us for an interview (contact us on deafcovidhe@uws.ac.uk). By completing this survey you will be offered the option to win one of two £30 gift voucher prizes.   

You can read more about what we have found from our interviews so far or watch it in BSL below.

Unmasking inequalities: the impact of Covid19 on deaf students in higher education

Watch the first part on positive experiences from pandemic among deaf students in BSL:

In the period March 2021-September 2022, we are working on a research project funded by ESRC (Economic and Social Research Council) with a focus on the impact of Covid for deaf higher education students in all the nations across the UK.

We have now collected some pilot data, and, in this vlog, we will describe the preliminary findings from our online interviews with deaf students, disability support staff academics and senior managers from universities across the UK. 

Although there were many negative experiences shared while we were examining the inequalities deaf students experienced during the pandemic, some deaf students reported a more positive experience online – as long as accessibility measures were in place. 

We spoke to ten deaf students with diverse background regarding gender, ethnicity, age, type of studies – and the various experiences of studying during the pandemic can be divided along two ends of a continuum of negative and positive impacts from the lockdown.  

We will start with the more positive experiences:

Positive experiences for deaf students during the pandemic: 

Three of the students (2 signing and 1 speaking student) experienced online teaching that did work well for them.  

Why?  

 There are several reasons: 

One of them was studying a deaf related course at a university far from where the student lived. She was also pregnant, and already had a lot of work with caring duties, travel, and other planning – so when lockdown happened, and suddenly the opportunity to participate online was there- this student felt she could now be more included in the course.

In addition, the course was organised by lecturers who already had a high level of deaf awareness. They used a platform that was suitable for deaf people, including BSL users, and the interpreters provided were of an exceptionally good standard.

Another positive example is a speaking student with hearing loss who has some other disabilities and underlying health issues. This student experienced increased accessibility to the course because they no longer needed to meet up physically. 

In addition, this student felt the activities outside of the classroom were now more accessible for people who are disabled and have underlying health issues. 

This student could hear/lipread other people if it is in a quiet environment. So, when the other participants (lecturer/students) learned the etiquette of online behaviour e.g., turning the camera on, raising a hand if saying something, the online extracurricular meetings were experienced as accessible during the pandemic.

The third example is a deaf student who has underlying mental health issues. This student felt that with online teaching, there were fewer distractions. Besides, this student did not feel the need to give an excuse for staying at home and felt online teaching has benefits for deaf students. However, an essential layer in this student’ experience of accessible online teaching (e.g., both including qualified interpreter and live captions) were the previous struggles experienced by the student within the same university.  

Negative experiences for deaf students during the pandemic because of poor attitude/unwillingness to change things

Watch the second part in BSL:

While those were the positive experiences among deaf students, there are unfortunately many negative experiences for most of the students (7 deaf students plus also those three students described above still reported many issues) which also are supported by our interviews with disability advisors, interpreters and notetakers. 

Many of the issues experienced by deaf students during the pandemic are like those pre-pandemic but during the pandemic some novel issues occurred or issues that might happen to all university students but are worse for deaf students. 

One of the new kinds of recurring pandemic issues was access to online teaching and the type of platform being used. Many interview participants reported their universities used platforms; for example, Microsoft Teams which caused problems.  Microsoft Teams responded to sound/voice and not signing, highlighting the video that was the source of the sound, the screen of the interpreter automatically shrinks because the screen of the speaker is made bigger.  So, the deaf students cannot see the interpreter signing on the screen.  When complaining or asking lecturers and universities to change it to a more accessible platform, for example, to Zoom (where an interpreter could be pinned for example), their requests were refused.

Students often must explain, re-explain, and develop arguments as to why any specific platform does not work, as expressed by one student who had asked the lecturer to change platform: “I said this to the lecturer, but they were like well this is how we do it”. 

The university does not always adapt to other platforms other than what they have previously used. The refusal of this simple adaptation revealed that institutional audism was more obvious during the lock down. 

Besides, as deaf students, they must watch the screen for many hours focusing on the interpreter, captions and/or lipreading. Screen, eyes and concentration fatigue is a major concern for deaf people because deaf people cannot close their eyes and listen but must rely on the internet and screen quality, interpreter’s internet and screen, captions quality and sounds. All these novel issues for deaf students mean they got more challenges besides other issues which deaf university students often struggle with, for example signing deaf students struggle with the quality of the interpreting in general.

There are many more issues that need to be addressed around online teaching during the pandemic, and we continue this research with both interviews and surveys – and if you are a student yourself, or a BSL interpreter, notetaker, academic, disability advisor who works in higher educational settings, we would really like to interview you! (For students we will provide a voucher of £25 after your completed interview). 

Please contact us on deafcovidhe@uws.ac.uk if you would like to be interviewed or visit our website https://deafcovidhe.uws.ac.uk/ for more information about the project.