Digital Accessibility is an oft-overlooked aspect of modern-day life, and as such, it’s more important than ever to discuss and highlight.
With so much of our lives being conducted online, from doctor’s appointments to food shopping, it’s essential that everyone has access to online services, and we don’t just mean having an internet connection. Read more →
So, you’ve been assessed by Access to Work, you’ve got any equipment you need, and you’re loving the live captioning we provide. Everything’s hunky dory right?
Hmm, not quite…
A lot of our clients tell us they wish there was some way of training everyone they work with to understand more about hearing loss, and the impact it has on employees like themselves.
Well there is!
We provide deaf awareness training courses that not only help your colleagues understand your experience, but also help them communicate more effectively with any clients or customers with hearing loss.
The trainer skilfully introduced us to the deaf world, showing us the difficulties and also the amazing skill of deaf people as they communicate through lipreading, signing and concentrated hearing. My awareness went from a 3 to a 10! Great course.
– HM Revenue & Customs
Unlike a lot of other deaf awareness courses available, we don’t work on the assumption that all deaf people use British Sign Language (BSL). As an organisation that is deaf-owned and deaf-led we know that, in reality, 99% of people with hearing loss do not use BSL as their first language. That’s why our trainers are native English speakers, and also why we emphasise that organisations need to think beyond BSL when asked to provide communications support.
We can tailor all of our training courses specifically for your organisation, and can include you in them to help educate your colleagues on your personal experience of working in your organisation.
Here are a couple of examples of the training we offer;
Deaf awareness training
(full day or half day)
Aim: to enhance the awareness and knowledge of issues around deafness and hearing loss.
Objectives:
Your colleagues will be able to try out hearing aids, practise lipreading exercises and learn the two-handed BSL alphabet (also known as fingerspelling).
To find out more about our training courses contact us.
Communicating with deaf and hard of hearing people
(we recommend half day)
Aim: to help your organisation understand the best practice for communicating with deaf people, and so avoid loss of business or staff.
Objectives:
All our training courses are provided by qualified trainers who provide training from the perspective of the organisation, their employees and their potential customers.
To find out more about how our training courses could help your organisation, contact us.
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There are 360 million deaf people in the world. It makes business sense to be aware. At the end of a typical deaf awareness training session, you will be able to;
To find out more about our training courses or to book a place, contact us
Sally, one of our expert deaf and deaf blind awareness trainers, gave us an insight into the valuable work she does. She is always telling people they should get training from her, and we’ve brought her out to say hello!
We work as a team all around the UK, delivering both deaf awareness and communication skills training for everyone from the young to the old, the professionals to the man in the street. Everyone who works with people should get training in communication skills.
Last week, we ran a deaf blind awareness day, training a mixture of older people, visually impaired people, deaf and hearing. The aim was to encourage people to volunteer to become “buddies” for those who are isolated in their own homes due to age related deaf blindness. We also found that the information is useful for those who are just coming out and learning how to deal with deafness and don’t know where or how to get training that is appropriate for them.
This particular group of older deaf blind people are not as well known as they should be. You can’t hear so well, and you can’t see so well, they need support in maintaining independence and living a meaningful life. They don’t need pity – they need someone to go round to support them with their mail, perhaps go shopping, have a chat or even someone to guide them to the local pub. Deaf blindness means you have issues with access to information, communication and mobility. Life doesn’t stop when you become deaf blind.
Many people think it’s impossible to talk to deaf blind people; this isn’t true. There are so many tactics to use and learn, and we teach these in our deaf blind courses. In fact, what’s suitable for older deaf blind people is also very suitable for older (and younger!) deaf people too. When you attend one of our courses, you will wonder why you didn’t get training in this area before as it’s so useful.
Let’s have a quick look at the statistics, before we go further…
55% of people over 60 years old are deaf or hard of hearing. That’s about 8-9 million in the UK, and of these, half will be struggling with getting accustomed to hearing aids, and the other half will have given up, shoved them in a drawer or not even taken any steps to have a hearing test.
Of this age group, 1 in 6 will also have a visual impairment.
It is more likely people will go to the local charities dealing with blindness; there is nowhere to go if you are deaf. (unless you know of a great lipreading class down the road, and have enough money to pay for it!)
So here we were delivering this training. They did a survey of all their 1800 members who were visually impaired. The results were astonishing, 1200 of them admitted to having a hearing loss on top of the visual impairment. This means, statistically, there could be as many as 5 million older people with acquired age related deaf blindness.
Our courses are different. We don’t just talk about our rich life experiences of being deaf and being discriminated against daily, we talk about solutions, ideas, and challenging stereotypes leading to this taboo subject of deafness, especially among those who have become deaf after being a hearing person all their lives. We also put you in our shoes, let you have a listen to what it’s like when using a hearing aid, how the environment can affect communication – and of course we let you have a go at finding out about lipreading, why it’s difficult, and how important it is for family, friends and colleagues to understand why some deaf people hide their deafness. You’ll come away with a whole new understanding of deafness, and deaf blindness – and gain some valuable communication skills as well. To date, the feedback from the deaf blind awareness training has been mind-blowing.
If you would like to know more about all the different courses we offer, contact us about our bespoke training courses.
by Cath Clarke
To the stranger in the changing room at the swimming pool: I’m not being rude. I’m avoiding too much eye contact in case you start up a conversation that I won’t be able to hear. For someone who is naturally friendly and willing to chat, this goes against my nature but hearing aids and water don’t mix.
To the people who invite me out for a meal at a busy restaurant. Oh how I would love to relax, laugh, chat and have fun. But all I hear is the noisiness of the restaurant. Hearing aids don’t just amplify what you want to hear – they amplify everything. That’s every other table’s conversation, laughter, clanking of cutlery as well as the one I’m sitting at …oh and any background music. In other words, it’s one big noise. Then on my table someone will say something quick and witty, everyone will laugh and I will have missed it. This is why I’m often reluctant, even scared to go out in a big group. You may go home feeling happy and elated. I often go home and cry with frustration.
To the well meaning person who at the start of a meeting will loudly say, “Come and sit on the front row where you can hear, Cath!”: as much as I appreciate your consideration, I don’t actually want to be singled out as different thank you very much. I’d prefer to feel normal, not like some kind of invalid.
To the people who speak at meetings and refuse to use a microphone for whatever reason: I think if I turned up in a wheelchair you wouldn’t refuse to let me use the ramp to have access to the meeting.
To the people I have to ask to repeat what they have just said because I’m hard of hearing: yes, you do need to raise your voice, not just repeat slowly what you just said at the same volume, and no, you don’t actually need to shout at me as if I’m stupid.
To anyone who says something to me which I miss and then I ask them to repeat it: saying, “Never mind, it doesn’t matter” makes me feel totally worthless. What you said may not have been important or worth repeating but how will I ever know that if I’m not considered worthy of hearing it?
To the people who tell me I should take up lip reading classes: yes, I’ve been there done that but did you know that to be able to lip read the person speaking has to be facing you, in the right light and not covering their mouth with their hands, turning their head away muttering or even worse, talking to you whilst walking away? Being able to lip read is a skill gathered over a life-time and even then it’s easy to misinterpret words. Telling someone they should learn to lip read is negating any responsibility on the speaker’s behalf to show me some consideration.
To the people who are genuinely surprised when I tell them that I have a hearing loss: I bluff a lot. A good percentage of the conversation will have been guesswork on my behalf so if I’ve said something stupid, it’s because I’ve misheard what you said. And believe me, I know when I’ve said something stupid: I’m quite good at reading people’s facial expressions and when I get “that” look, I feel embarrassed.
To those who think I shouldn’t bare my soul publicly: I’m not going to apologise. Just writing my thoughts down has helped me rationalise the thoughts that go round in my head and I sincerely hope this has helped someone else. I do believe we should be here to help each other and be compassionate towards each other.
To the people reading this thinking I should get a grip and not feel sorry for myself as many, many people are suffering to a greater degree than me: believe me, I tell myself that pretty much every day. Just some days, every now and again, this hidden disability gets me down. I don’t ask, “Why me, God?” I accept it’s part of who I am but it doesn’t make it any easier at times.
To anyone who’s taken the trouble to read this: thank you for trying to understand. Thank you for your friendship and concern. I’m normally fairly content and cheerful and very, very grateful for all the many, many blessings and good things in my life….but I am also human with feelings. Just like everyone else.
(c) Cath Clarke 2012
We are being kept busy with conferences, exhibitions, and trade shows. This week – on the same day! – our team exhibited at the Deaf Unity 2013 Deaf Learner’s conference and at the first Deaf Awareness Day in Hertfordshire. In Hertfordshire, one of our captioners, Orla, captioned the day’s presentations. She explained how she writes what she hears in shorthand into her steno machine, then her laptop converts this into English. Orla’s captions were streamed to a large screen for everyone to read. She also gave a demonstration of remote captioning CART services on her iPad – the latest in CART technology. CART is Communication Access Realtime Translation, a verbatim capture of what is said in real time.
Steno machine
Contact us to find out how you can have realtime captions streamed to you anytime, anywhere. Our captioners reporters are NRCPD and NCRA registered, providing high quality captions with no droppage of service. We offer the highest quality remote CART services in the UK.
On Tuesday 28th May I went to a Deaf Awareness day organised by Hertfordshire County Council. The police and the fire brigade both gave presentations, as did several senior members of the council’s Social Services department. I am a Police Community Volunteer with Hertfordshire Police, so I was sitting at a table with 5 police officers. I was wearing a black suit to try and blend in with their uniforms and it was surprising the number of people who took it for granted I’d be a police officer rather than a deaf volunteer! It was a very wet day but it was a well attended day with deaf people, and those working with them, present.
There were lots of displays for all sorts of deaf charities. I was delighted to see a table with leaflets about CART services and had a chat with the smartly dressed lady running it, Orla from 121 Captions. Orla captioned the presentations and gave a very professional and competent service with the minimum of errors. Many people at the event were very interested in what she was doing because they hadn’t seen CART services before. I would certainly seek out 121 Captions again if looking for captioning services.
Delegate, Deaf Awareness Day, Hertfordshire
We were a sponsor of Deaf Unity’s Deaf Learners 2013 Conference today. It was great to meet students and those interested in facilitating access to education for deaf learners with captioning and subtitling services.
We caught up with Rachel from Deaf Umbrella .. a tough feat, since both our schedules are so full and we’ve been trying to meet up for ages! We got to talking about the amazing Hearing Dogs and she roared with laughter when she heard the story of Smudge helping himself to the chocolate display while Jeanette was super busy lipreading the shop assistant 🙂
One of the sponsors, SignVideo, had their stall next to us – did you know they have classy new videophones and that you can use a laptop, mobile phone or tablet to access their sign video relay interpreting services? Technology is really opening up new opportunities for learning and work to sign language users.
Sign video relay interpreting
Our partner Positive Signs brought their expertise in delivering apprenticeship opportunities for deaf people in London. There was certainly a lot of interest! We hope to see more deaf learners take advantage of the fabulous opportunities offered through Positive Signs. The apprenticeships are offered with 121 Captions’ remote captioning and subtitling services. Think about what it feels like to be the only deaf person in the room at a prestigious city firm, and you have an interpreter next to you. Now think how it would feel to have instead, no interpreter next to you, but an iPad with an almost instant word-for-word translation of what is being said. It feels so liberating!
Deaf Apprenticeships
We were demonstrating our remote captioning and subtitling technology and today we decided to have red text on a white background – it was much easier on the eye than the traditional black or yellow text. You can change the colours of the captions to suit your viewer, as well as the background. If you would like to book a live demonstration, contact us.
Remote captioning and subtitling services suit everyone
As usually happens at such events, the service providers rallied together and we worked as a team to offer the delegates a successful event. James from SignVideo was our honorary IT expert 😉 and helped us to figure out the venue’s ethernet. We did not have full communication support available for hard of hearing and deafened people, so the team of sponsors thought on their feet, pulled together, and instantly provided us with a volunteer lip speaker – so a huge thank you, you were marvellous *claps wildly*. A huge thank you is also due to Nadine who was our BSL interpreter – she stepped in and interpreted into Sign Supported English. Nadine is amazing, she can listen to Arabic and translate into British Sign Language – we can’t wait to test her skills. We loved how the communication support providers pulled together to support one another today. Deaf unity at its best!
The 121 Captions captioning and subtitling team
On today’s agenda were …
David Chater, Department of Education spoke about breaking educational barriers and providing deaf people with access to information, resources and support that leads to sustainable achievements.
Liz Sayce OBE, Chief Executive Disability Rights UK talked about breaking work barriers and providing deaf people with employment support to find and keep jobs. She is working towards a world where everyone can get into gainful employment.
Asif Iqbal MBE spoke about his leadership journey and how he loves getting involved with community projects, supporting and empowering deaf people. I had a quick chat with him over lunch about Harrow Asian Deaf club of which he is President – it’s great to see some deaf awareness-raising in west London.
Rob Wilks, Deaf Lawyer and head of RAD Law centre spoke about equality for deaf learners and why the law is failing them. It has taken me years to get to meet him – finally! – as we used to write on each others blogs but I was in London and he was far far away in misty Wales!
There were four workshops facilitated by experts;
Jane Cordell, former deaf diplomat in the Foreign Office – As always, Jane spoke eloquently and emotionally about deaf equality in employment and education, and how to overcome barriers with confidence. *Just ignore all those negative thoughts!* – good advice, Jane! We were privileged to see for ourselves how she got so far in the Foreign Office and broke the glass ceiling for deaf people (we’re so proud of you!).
Penny Beschizza, Teacher of the Deaf and Dr Marian Grimes, Head of Centre for Deaf Education, City Lit talked about the need for good communication support for deaf learners.
Gary Morgan, professor of Linguistics at University College London told us about the linguistic needs of deaf learners in education – a fascinating insight into statistics and his personal stories.
John Hay, Deaf historian talked about deaf history & education.
Deaf Unity hopes to inspire change and empower the next generation of deaf learners through role models, networking and technology. We had some great role models on the day from deaf people who were able to give the benefit of their experience to others in the spirit of sharing. Deaf people working together can empower each other now, and in the future.
To find out more about our captioning and subtitling services, led by an ace deaf team, contact us.
Here are some misconceptions about deafness, deafblindness, and communication that we have come across in our training courses. Some of them may be obvious, others not. If you can answer all of these, then congratulations – you are halfway to becoming deaf aware and knowledgeable about deafness. If not, then perhaps it would be a good idea to come and find out more on a training course with 121 Captions to learn what deafness really means. After all, 10 million people in the UK and 360 million people in the world struggle with some degree of hearing loss.
The most common misconceptions are highlighted in bold.
To find out more about our bespoke training courses, contact us.