Deaf student allegedly given ‘no choice’ over BSL support after university deregisters as DSA provider (BSL)

To see the BSL translation of this article, thanks to Signly, please click on the signing hands icon at the bottom right side of the page! Then swipe on the text, or click on the play button to see it in BSL. 

A Deaf student has shared how she felt “stressed” after British Sign Language (BSL) support was removed by her university, and her new provider was allegedly arranged without her involvement.

Josie Jackson, a third year geography undergraduate at the University of Derby, lost the provision in October – after the uni de-registered themselves as providers of BSL services through the DSA in August.

In addition to losing the BSL support, Josie found she was no longer receiving note-taking help in lectures either, despite this service allegedly still being provided to other students.

Josie told The Limping Chicken: “I complained in an email to the disability team and other individuals in the university – including head of student services and [the] chancellor and vice chancellor – but I had in quick response a lack of sincere apology from the disability team, but defence of the university and lack of clear action from the email to try and improve their service onwards, which is what I wanted.

“A formal complaint was then proceeded by a long response (four weeks), only to find out that they are not doing anything on the issue, and entirely missed out the explanation on why I was removed from their note-taking services still running for other students.

“It is especially frustrating when I complained formally, to be made to wait a long time only to find out they will not be doing any action on it.”

Josie is now in receipt of new support, but claims she was given “no choice” over the new provider, and that the new company has “no deaf awareness or understanding of how deaf people work and how BSL interpreters work”.

“They aren’t specialist BSL providers. So it’s more hours trying to organise them and the support staff – time don’t need to be doing this,” she wrote in a public Facebook post.

In a statement to The Limping Chicken responding to Josie’s comments, a University of Derby spokesperson said there has been “no disruption to the student’s studies and the support provided to them”.

They said: “New external suppliers for BSL interpreting and specialist note-taking were put in place by the DSA, following the University’s deregistration as a BSL provider under the DSA to ensure compliance.

“The University continues to work with all disabled students and the DSA to ensure that students have the appropriate reasonable adjustments in place.”

Photo: Josie Jackson.

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.