NHS Trust poster advertises BSL services with ASL alphabet

A British Sign Language (BSL) interpreting agency has apologised after a poster for communication services at Worcestershire Acute Hospitals (WAH) NHS Trust hospitals featured signs in American Sign Language (ASL).

Birmingham-based company Word360 produced the leaflet, which told Deaf patients “in need of communication support” to “simply approach a member of staff” with the flyer.

However, members of the Deaf community have since shared the poster on social media, noting the signs at the bottom of the leaflet appear to be of the first four letters of the ASL alphabet.

In a statement issued to The Limping Chicken, Word360 said they have been working with WAH to raise awareness of “how to access BSL interpreting services”.

Kavita Parmar, chief commercial officer, told The Limping Chicken: “We are grateful for the member of the Deaf community who identified issues with the poster which we immediately rectified and would like to apologise for any inconvenience this may have caused.

“The use of sign language imagery in the leaflet and poster design was intended to enable members of the deaf community to quickly identify that the information was relevant to them.

“We are very disappointed that an error on our part led to the use of ASL imagery and we have ensured that our internal processes will avoid any such error in the future.

“We are massive advocates of inclusion and appropriate representation and disappointed that this incident has undermined a genuine attempt to build relationships with the Deaf community.”

Ms Parmar stressed the company has “taken this matter seriously” and “lessons have been learned”, with “changes made to prevent this happening again”.

WAH chief executive Matthew Hopkins added: “A small number of posters and leaflets were produced by our British Sign Language interpreting agency Word360 as part of a wider piece of work being carried out at the Trust to improve the experience of d/Deaf patients when accessing hospital services.

“We were grateful to a member of our local d/Deaf community for flagging the issues with us and took immediate steps to ensure that these are rectified.

“We are committed to ensuring our services are as accessible as possible and look forward to continuing to work with our d/Deaf community on the additional measures that can be put in place across our hospitals to support this.”

Photo: Word360/Worcestershire Acute Hospitals NHS Trust.

By Liam O’Dell. Liam is an award-winning Deaf freelance journalist and campaigner from Bedfordshire. He can be found talking about disability, theatre, politics and more on Twitter and on his website.