Lords speak out about access to exams for disabled students

Originally uploaded on flickr by jackhynes

If you’re wondering what the Lords were doing on the 15th day of December, they were having a big debate on equality. Maybe leaping around as well.

The Equality Bill had its first debate in the House of Lords last week, just before Parliament closed down for Christmas. The Equality Bill is an important bonzer Bill, aiming to streamline all of the existing pieces of legislation on discrimination into a single piece of legislation. As Michael Jackson might have put it if he was still alive, it doesn’t matter if you’re black or white, disabled, lesbian, Hindu, polysexual, anything. The Equality Bill will sort you out.

But in seriousness, it’s a serious Bill that the big disabled charties are welcoming, as a “critical friend”. NDCS‘s main interest in the Bill is in what it says about access to examinations for disabled students.

This is an area in which the exam bodies have very bad form. Halfway through the noughties, exam bodies withdrew all support for disabled students in a bizarre misreading of disability discrimination law. NDCS successfully campaigned for that support to be reinstated but there are still concerns that some of the exam bodies still just don’t get it. Disabled students have the right to be able to demonstrate what they can do through a system of flexibly designed exams. It cannot be impossible to do this without undermining the value of the qualification.

The Government has been listening to our concerns and is proposing that the new exams regulator, Ofqual, will have the power to decide what exam bodies should and shouldn’t do when considering how disabled people can access exams. This is a nice idea in principle, but it does give Ofqual a lot of power. So NDCS is working with a range of other charities to make sure there are checks in place to make sure this power is used for the benefit of disabled people.

We’re looking to get the wording of the legislation changed. For example, currently, it says it would be “desirable” for Ofqual to try and “minimise” the disadvantage to disabled students. I don’t like the word “minimise”; it seems to assume that an outcome in which some disadvantage is present is tolerable or acceptable. We want the exam system to work to eliminate disadvantage. And “desirable”? It sounds as if access to examinations is something I might find on an Amazon wish list.

We’ve been busy briefing Lords and, happily, a few of them agree with us. In the first debate on the Equality Bill in the Lords, Lord Low said:

“… the Minister will be aware of the uncomfortable history in which qualifications bodies have misguidedly chosen to demonstrate their commitment to standards that we all share by taking measures that disadvantage disabled people. They have lost the confidence of many disabled people by doing so. Clause 96 of the Bill explicitly authorises an exam system that disadvantages disabled candidates and says in terms that minimising this is merely desirable, not necessary. The wording does not sit comfortably in an Equality Bill. The Government is usually such a champion of the life chances of disabled people and their foundation on basic qualifications that I hope very much that we will be able to move this issue forward through a process of discussion.”

The Bill is going to be debated again in January, and we’ll looking to get the wording of the Bill changed to something that gives full access for deaf students in exams. Hopefully, it will be our first campaign victory of 2010.

This is going to be my last blog before Christmas – so seasons greetings to everyone and thanks for reading and commenting!

Final Lamb inquiry report on SEN now out

Brian Lamb finally published his report last week on how the Government can increase parental confidence in the special educational needs (SEN) system, and just before Christmas too. After three interim reports, the Lamb reports were beginning to feel a bit like a gift that keeps on giving.

The final report makes for very interesting reading. It contains not 1, not 2, but 51 recommendations on actions needed to improve the SEN system. NDCS has given a very warm welcome to the report which addresses a range of issues from our Must do better! report on educational underachievement of deaf children and our Close the Gap campaign.

Some of the recommendations had already been published and are being acted upon already by the Government. For example, recommendations on making Ofsted inspectors more inclusive and stronger rights of appeal for parents in the statementing process are being taken forward by the Children, Schools and Families Bill. This piece of legislation is due to get its first debate in Parliament in January, and NDCS will be calling for it to get through Parliament quickly, before the general election.

Other recommendations are new and a welcome surprise to boot. Currently, schools don’t have to take ‘reasonable adjustments’ if a deaf child needs auxiliary aids (like, for example, a microphone or amplification system). It’s often provided as a part of a statement, but this isn’t much consolation to the many deaf children who don’t have a statement. So the Lamb inquiry proposes that disability discrimination laws be improved so that schools do have to make reasonable adjustments in this area. NDCS is going to be writing to the Government to stress how important this is.

Another surprise was a recommendation for a new national and independent helpline on SEN. Given the volume of calls NDCS’s free helpline gets, there would seem to be a clear need for this.

The Department for Children, Schools and Families is going to be publishing it’s formal response to all of the recommendations in January, but already they’ve issued a fairly warm response. I’ll be checking to make sure the warm words lead to warm actions.

What do you think of the report and its proposals for improving the SEN system? Is it good news for deaf children? Let us know what you think by leaving a comment below.

Update on Phonak Naida hearing aids

Earlier in the week, one of my colleagues at NDCS met up with some Phonak hearing-aid makers to discuss some of the ongoing problems experienced with their Naida hearing aids. A lot of people, myself included, have had teething problems with it. Happily, mine have now resolved themselves and I can now really tell the improvement with the new hearing aids. But, worringly, children seem to be having particular problems with this hearing aid. Some audiologists have stopped giving out the hearing aid to very young children, because the child may not be able to communicate that their hearing aid is playing up.

Phonak have been looking into it and apparently, if I’ve understood the science, there is a theory is that a particular type of hearing aid battery which is being used in some areas, can potentially cause a spike in the voltage which dupes the hearing aid in thinking there is no power left, and shutting itself down. The problem may not actually be restricted to children; it’s just that adults simply turn their hearing aid on and off again and think nothing of it. There are a range of other theories and Phonak scientists in Switzerland have been busy in labs have been trying to get to the bottom of it.

NDCS has been asked to ask parents to stay on alert for any problems and feed back to their audiologist. Feel free to leave a comment on this page also to share your experiences. The more information they have about the problem, the quicker a solution can be found. Encouragingly, the feedback on the Naida hearing aids is still overwhelmingly positive and parents are still chosing to go for the Naida option.

Finally, an apology – a blog was published on this topic earlier in error. If you can still read it, please ignore and send me a whip for me to do mea culpas with.

BBC news online still failing deaf children

I decided to conduct a little scientific experiment today. It was very illuminating. But depressing. If you want to try out my experiment, repeat the following steps.

1) Take what is probably the most famous online news website in the world – BBC news online – and insert the word ‘deaf’ into the search engine at the top of the page.

2) On the right hand side column, look for a box on ‘news and sport clips’ and view results for all of the recent online news videos or radio stories about deaf people.

3) See how many of these online clips feature any kind of access for deaf people.

4) Ask colleagues to put on their goggles and observe for your eruptions of fury. From a safe distance, obviously.

The results of my experiment? Well, of the first ten clips that came up:

* Nine were video clips and one was a radio clip.

* Only 2 of the videos had subtitles. A third had signed interpretation but no subtitles (which isn’t much use to deaf people who don’t sign)

* None of the clips, including the radio clip, had any kind of transcript or anything more than a cursory summary of the story.

* Four of the stories featured deaf children, of which two featured NDCS. None of these stories were subtitled or signed.

For an organisation that is paid for the public, including deaf people who don’t get any kind of discount for their TV license, and who have a remit to serve the public, this is pretty outrageous. What makes it worse for me is that I now feel pretty disempowered to be unable to comment on a story that is about deafness and features deaf children. The deaf children in the video clips won’t have a clue what is being said about them.

It’s not as if the technology isn’t there, as google have now proved.

Earlier in the year, I wrote to the BBC about this and was given some assurances that all of the above would soon be a thing of the past. So, as well as disempowered, I now feel like a complete muppet too for believing this.

I feel a very stroppy letter coming on. I’ll let you know how I get on.

Enjoying 3D subtitles at the cinema

Image courtesy of www.filmofilia.com

I had a very exciting night out on Tuesday when I popped down to Greenwich to see the first ever film to be subtitled AND be in 3D!

Apparently, getting subtitled in a 3D film poses a whole range of technological challenges that it’s not been possible to fix until now. I’ve even been told that if the subtitles appeared wrong, people will throw up – without it even being a recent Eddie Murphy ‘comedy’ film. A quick glance at the screen without my 3D glasses revealed why – the subtitles have to be printed on the screen in overlapping text (and thereby impossible to read) in order to be viewable clearly in 3D.

The film that gets the honour of being the first ever 3D subtitled film is Disney’s A Christmas Carol so a big hats off to Disney. I felt obliged to go and see the film having provided a quote for a Disney press release welcoming it, but I’m pleased to say it was a very enjoyable film and the 3D effects were, as I believe the kids say, cool. When it was snowing on screen, it almost felt as it was snowing inside the cinema. That said, I remain of the firm belief that the Muppets Christmas Carol is the definitive film version of the Dickens classic.

It’s great news for deaf children and young people, who might otherwise have missed out on the opportunity to see the latest 3D films along with their hearing friends. The hope is that even more 3D films will be subtitled. I’m told that the up and coming big film, Avator will also be in subtitles and 3D.

My only gripe – and it’s not meant to detract from the achievement – is that virtually all of the showings of the film in London were either on a Sunday and Tuesday. Luckily, I was free on the Tuesday, but I did find myself grumbling “Bah! Humbug!” at the lack of choice over when I could see the film.

But in the meantime, well done to Disney for a real Christmassy treat!

PS You can find out where A Christmas Carol is showing in your area with subtitles by going to the ever helpful Yourlocalcinema.com website.

Communicating with MPs about communication for deaf children

Image courtesy of www.corbisimages.com

Yesterday, I braved the freezing elements to get out of the office and head to Westminster for an All Party Parliamentary Group on Deafness meeting about communication. The Group is basically an informal bunch of MPs and peers who have an interest in deafness and want to advocate within Parliament for more support for deaf people. RNID and NDCS are both temporary custodians of the group for the year, and this was the first meeting in Parliament with us running things.

Happily, it all went very well, with a respectable turn out from MPs. On our side, NDCS Director of Policy and Campaigns spoke about the need for parents to have impartial information in order to make an informed choice about communication with their deaf child, and for the family to be given support from the local authority in learning how to communicate effectively within the family. Raena, an inspiring mother of a deaf son, followed this with a talk about her own experiences and challenges, and her determination to make sure her son was fully included within the family, with the whole family committing to learning sign language. Hopefully, MPs left with a strong message that it can’t be ethical to leave families to their own devices when learning how to communicate with their own child.

Sadly, the message on impartial information and informed choice was lost on some members of the audience with one person strongly advocating for an oral approach and another for sign language and a range of views being expressed between them which caused a sharp intake of breath in me. I’m always surprised that some people seem to think that one approach is going to work for every deaf child, which cannot possibly be in the child’s best interests. Still, if one good thing came out of the exchange, being exposed to two opposite extreme views always leave me feeling quite reassured that I must be right if I completely disagree with both.

You can read more about the meeting, and one of the speeches, on the NDCS website. Am looking forward to the next meeting already.