Founders of the Sound Waves Foundation tell us about their inspirations and achievements to date (BSL)

Hi everyone, we are Silvie and Nicola, founders of a charity called Sound Waves Foundation.

Silvie is a mum of four, including two profoundly deaf children who wear cochlear implants. Nicola has two daughters, with her youngest wearing hearing aids. Together, we run the day-to-day activities of the charity and oversee all our projects.

Though we’re based in different parts of the South East, our work has national reach and are passionate about supporting as many deaf children and young adults as possible.

In our multilingual households, we blend oral communication with some British Sign Language (BSL), embracing the diversity of communication in everyday life.

The idea for Sound Waves all began during lockdown. As two mums of deaf children, we grew increasingly frustrated with how inaccessible online lessons and virtual interactions were during home learning.

We watched our children struggle, not just academically but socially, and it gave us a much deeper understanding of the daily challenges they face.

We began to see how these struggles extended beyond the home and into the classroom. Some children, confident enough to speak up, would raise their hands when they misheard or misunderstood.

Others, more reserved, relied on their classmates to fill in the gaps—often receiving secondhand, incomplete explanations. Our children frequently told us how they had to wait for teachers to repeat instructions or explain classroom activities, simply because they hadn’t heard them the first time.

As a result, they would often resort to copying their peers, with mixed success and accuracy.

This experience opened our eyes to the many unseen barriers deaf children face in education—and it fuelled our determination to make a change.

Our vision is to make education and communication more accessible, empowering deaf children to thrive. We want to instil creativity and innovation in everything we do.

Our initiatives help to reshape society’s understanding of deafness and inclusion. The combination of our personal experience and our community projects have compounded SWF’s belief that when you design for disability you deliver broad, transformative benefits for everyone. All our projects have this at the heart of it.

We have a number of projects that are nationwide initiatives or that are accessed online from our website. We have other projects where we are working with local schools and clubs in Sussex such as our BSL after school club and Sign Safe Waters but we are working hard to grow these across the UK.

We introduce different visual means of communicating into mainstream society. All of the projects we are working on have this theme at the core.

Since becoming a registered charity in January 2022 we have worked tirelessly to drive forward our vision, piloting exciting initiatives and growing an extensive network. The demand for our projects is ever growing.

Our current projects are summarised below:

• Action for Captions: We are making education more accessible for deaf children in mainstream schools by using live captioning technology.  We are conducting our own research into the impact of this technology on learning and working closely with key stakeholders in government and education to deliver the technology into more schools across the country.We have also set up a hub for parents and schools to support them to introduce live captioning in their schools (SoundWavesFoundation.)
• Sign Safe Waters: We have introduced selected British Sign Language (BSL) words into water safety to make communication in and around water visual and accessible for all.We have partnered with HSLSC lifeguards in Hove and are delivering this successful initiative into more clubs nationally.
• BSL School Clubs: we have developed a fun and vibrant BSL course to teach hearing and deaf children this valuable and visual language side-by-side in mainstream primary schools in Sussex.The project is vital in our mission to integrate and unite children from an early age while breaking down barriers and stereotypes as the first step toward meaningful change.
  
  
• Deaf Kids Tip Kits: are tips written by deaf children to inform others on how to be more inclusive deaf-aware during activities like play dates, sleep overs, school trips and many more. Our Tip Kits are available now to download from our website.

The stigma around deafness persists. A poll by the National Deaf Children’s Society (NDCS) found that 52% of Britons lack confidence in communicating with deaf individuals.

For deaf children, this lack of awareness has real consequences. 80% of parents report that their deaf children struggle to access local activities, while feelings of isolation and loneliness are widespread among the 1,422 deaf children and young adults in Sussex (NDCS).

As a result, their mental health, confidence, and communication skills often suffer. The impact extends into adulthood. Government statistics show that deaf people are twice as likely to experience poor mental health compared to the general population. 

On a practical level, deaf children frequently struggle to follow conversations, miss key information, and disengage from discussions—leading to increased social isolation.

We believe there is a critical need for early intervention. By making classrooms and communities more inclusive from the start, we can break the cycle of disengagement, reduce long-term mental health challenges, and ensure that deaf children thrive—both academically and socially.

The feedback we have had from students has been powerful:

Captioning in class:

“As a deaf child it definitely helped my ability to understand the teacher” 

“It helps me with my spelling”

 “I can follow the teacher easier with captions when the class is being loud”

British Sign Language (BSL) Afterschool Club:

We didn’t feel like the ‘deaf ones’

“We practiced the signs in the playground and friends came up with their own sign name”

We have had many moments where we have had to pinch ourselves such as standing on Brighton beach being interviewed on BBC radio not realising we were already live on air!

But two of the most standout moments was reading the feedback from the students using captions and the positive impact they felt it made on their learning experience.

This included watching our animation ‘Sonic Boom’ for the first time and the amazing way our animator Megan captured the emotion so perfectly to remind us to keep doing the work we do!  You can see the short animation here.

Looking ahead, we want to see more people demanding integrated visual communication in mainstream education and society to make it the norm and not an ‘adjustment’.

Going forwards we are planning a major live captioning event this year to bring together key decision makers in education.  We are hopeful to get their support to progress our critically needed initiatives in schools.

We want people to understand that deafness exists on a spectrum—it is diverse, and there are many ways deaf individuals communicate. Our goal is to reshape perceptions, challenge misconceptions, and dispel the notion that deafness limits a child’s potential.

To find out more about Sound Waves Foundation, see their website with contact details and further information here.