Anti-disabled language

I saw yesterday that Mencap have successfully managed to get Ofcom to review an earlier ruling that basically suggested it was OK for Channel 4 to use the term “retard”. This was after 700 of Mencap’s supporters wrote to Ofcom, a nice example of a successful campaign in action. Here’s hoping that the review eventually sends a strong signal that using derogative terms like this to describe disabled people is just not on.

The equivalent term for deaf people is “deaf and dumb”. I find it incredibly offensive for the obvious reasons that it implies that all deaf people are without speech and/or plain stupid. I can speak and I got my education. As well as being inaccurate, it perpetuates stereotypes about deaf people that don’t help deaf children at school when they’re trying to get the support they need to do well. Thankfully the use of the term seems to be rare these days but I still see it crop up from time to time, usually in some ill-informed rag of a newspaper, and it usually causes me to erupt violently at my desk like Pompeii the sequel. Maybe the next time I see it, I’ll fire off a complaint to Ofcom…

What do others think? Do you find it as offensive as I do? Should Ofcom clamp down on the use of such language?

Response to story on abuse at deaf school in America

There was a rather sad reminder last week that deaf children are more likely to be abused, when news broke of a school in America where 200 deaf children had been abused over two decades from the 1950s.

Reading the papers, it was hard to tell what was most distressing. The seemingly woeful lack of action taken by those in charge at the Catholic Church when the allegations came to light and a continuing attitude which comes across, in my view, as not particularly apologetic.

Or the fact that deaf children and people had been trying to speak out about these allegations for years and had been effectively ignored. In the end, the abuser died before he could be brought to justice.

The hope is that something like that could never happen again. Yet research by the University of Manchester earlier in the year shows that most local authorities in England are pretty poor in their social care and child protection arrangements for deaf children. NDCS is calling on all Local Safeguarding Children’s Boards to conduct a review of their local child protection arrangements.

PS Just a reminder that the views expressed in this blog are mine only.

NDCS’s plans for the general election

Image courtesy of www.politics.co.uk

So what is the National Deaf Children’s Society (NDCS) planning to do for the UK general election? My suggestion that we go all radical and throw custard over politicians or get a group of young deaf terrorists to kidnap the Queen, seem to have been quietly ignored. Instead, here are some details of NDCS’s plans:

1) Drafting a pledge and asking politicians to sign it to show their support for deaf children. And then getting NDCS supporters to lobby their local candidates about the pledge so that as many politicians sign it as possible. If the politicians get elected, NDCS will “remind” them of their promises to support deaf children.

2) Producing introductory briefing papers for politicians new to deafness, and also special information factsheets for every constituency. The idea is to make it local for all candidates so they can see why their support for deaf children is needed where they live.

3) Monitoring the manifestos to see what the political parties are promising on education, health, social care, etc. A group of young deaf people have already interrogated leading MPs from each party to ask about their future plans to support deaf children.

All of this stuff is going to be placed on NDCS’s web in a special election section.

What else do you reckon NDCS should be doing in the run-up to the general election?

PS NDCS does not advocate throwing custard over politicians or kidnapping the Queen.

Deaf young people reach for the stars

Who are these shiny faced youngsters you see to the right? Well, if last weekend is anything to go by, they may will be the future.

Image courtesy of NDCS

The youngsters were part of a group of 17 deaf young people who attended a pilot training weekend, run by the National Deaf Children’s Society, for deaf young people on campaigns and media, the first of its kind. I was there to dispense my hard-earned wisdom on how to campaign effectively and create a campaign plan. The whole weekend was called “Reach for the stars” which was a bit unfortunate for someone of my generation who spent their university years in a sweaty club practicing the dance moves to said S Club 7 classic.

Anyhow, the 17 deaf young people were all fantastic, very clever and quickly grasped the key principles behind both campaigns and media and gave their views on what the National Deaf Children’s Society should be campaigning on. They also got to meet CBBC Newsround presenter, Ricky Boleto (centre, light blue t-shirt, in photo), who came and gave a talk about how he became a journalist and the challenges he faced being deaf in one ear. The youngsters were also inspired by a talk from Nadia Clarke, a young deaf person with cerebral palsy, who’s been campaigning for years and has produced an award winning DVD.

The whole weekend was a useful learning experience to me too: how to (or rather, not to) keep a group of deaf young people interested and engaged in campaigns. But overall, a really enjoyable weekend and hopefully one NDCS will be repeating in the future.

Deaf children’s deaf awareness

I’ve been doing a lot of musing recently. Earlier in the week, I mused on the definition of deafness and what impact this might have. I’ve also been musing on the deaf awareness of deaf children.

My musing was triggered by an NDCS weekend where I had a very enjoyable time with a bunch of young deaf cheeky little monkeys / rascals (delete as appropriate). At the fringes, I spent some time observing how the deaf children interacted with each other, and I was struck by how often basic deaf awareness rules were forgotten – like facing each other when talking. Children will obviously forget the rules when they’re having fun, but it still struck me as slightly ironic that deaf children might be some of the worse offenders when it comes to deaf awareness.

90% of deaf babies are born to hearing families with no experience of deafness, and around 85% of deaf children attend mainstream schools – so a fairly large portion of deaf children may rarely meet other deaf children until they go to something like a NDCS weekend.

I think it’s often a useful learning experience for the deaf rascals to meet other deaf rascals for precisely this reason – to learn more about who they are and how to communicate with each other. But it did make me wonder if more needs to be done to educate deaf children about deafness? And if so, how best to do this?

What do you think? As always, good to hear your thoughts.

Am I deaf or what?

I was thinking over the weekend about an issue which I sometimes find myself debating with colleagues from time to time: does the term “deaf” put off deaf children?

When I was young, I hated the term “deaf” and generally referred to myself as “hearing impaired”. I always thought that “deaf” gave the impression I couldn’t hear anything at all when, in fact, I spent many nights bopping to Kylie after school. But as I got older, I reclaimed the term “deaf” and became more comfortable with using it. I began to see it as a positive aspect of my self identity.

But what about deaf children today? Are they like me when I was young? I come across a lot of deaf children who don’t regard themselves as “deaf”. Like me, they might grow out of it or they might not – it will be their choice. But, in the meantime, they might be closed off from even looking at services offered to “deaf” children / adults because they don’t see it as relevant. Are they missing out on the support they might need because of definitions that don’t work for everyone?

Complicating matters is that I don’t personally like some of the alternatives. Hard of hearing; it makes me sounds like an old fogey walking around with an ear trumpet. Hearing loss is just inaccurate; many deaf people never had any hearing to lose. It also creates an image in my head of someone saying “darling, where did I leave my hearing? I had it a moment ago..” so that probably won’t work either. And hearing impaired implies a malfunction which, despite me using it as a child, leaves me feeling cold as a deaf adult.

Is there any way of coming up with an acceptable term to all? What do other people think?

Still no answers from Government on audiology training

Image courtesy of www.lcchs.nhs.uk

I mentioned a while back that our requests for information from the Department of Health on cuts to audiology training have not been terribly successful, if the letter we received a few weeks back from the Department was anything to go by.

Sadly, things have not improved. Last week, we got replies to some parliamentary questions that Norman Lamb MP, Liberal Democrat Shadow Health Secretary had raised on the National Deaf Children’s Society’s behalf. Norman was trying to tease out more information about the proposed new audiology training programme, which I fear is leading to cuts by the backdoor.

To give one example, Norman asked when the first new paediatric audiologists will graduate under the new audiology training programme. After all, the Government should not be cutting existing places unless new graduates are ready to roll out quickly, surely?

The answer? “Working with stakeholders, we are developing a range of education and training programmes which will have a focus on audiology… These will encompass the needs of both adult and paediatric services.”

I might take that as a “er… don’t know, guv”.

The answers to the other questions weren’t much better. Indeed, the only information of use they provided was on the number of audiology training places over the past three years.

It all makes for a very frustrating campaign where the Department seems determined to provide no reassurance or answers to anything. However, it’s not all bad news. With over 460 people now having contacted their MP about our Hear for the Future campaign, the Department has started to realise it can’t ignore these concerns forever. Civil servants at the Department have just agreed to come and meet with us. Hopefully, we’ll then finally get some answers.

In the meantime, your help in keeping the pressure on the Department is still needed. If you haven’t already, please contact your MP, using our special thingybob on NDCS’s website which makes it easy as pie to do this. I reckon if over 500 people do the action, the Government will be even more proactive in trying to address our concerns…

Subtitled Youtube access for deaf people

Happy day. Youtube have confirmed there will be automatic subtitling on its English videos.

Back in November, Google announced it would be aiming to do this. Today’s announcement confirms it for Youtube. The story has already been covered on BBC news and the National Deaf Children’s Society has done a statement on it..

It’s not going to be 100% accurate, as no speech recognition software is perfect. Not ideal but I know that many deaf children and adults are quite adept at filling in the gaps and working out what was meant to be said. And, of course, telling everyone about the funny bloopers. My favourite blooper is when someone on TV said “Help yourself.” The subtitles reported it as “Help your elf.” I still chortle thinking of it.

Anyhow, the Youtube announcement now puts the pressure on others to follow suit. I won’t name names because everyone knows about my grudge against the BBC’s lack of online subtitles, even for stories about deaf people. Some good news as we go into the weekend though. Are others happy about the news too?

Deaf question time for education politicians

Back in January, I mentioned that a tremendous trio of deaf students from Heston Community School in west London went to Westminster to interview MPs from each of the main political parties on on their parties’ approach to supporting deaf children to help parents of deaf children decide how to vote in the upcoming general election.

The interviews have now been published by the National Deaf Children’s Society and are available on their website.

There are a few similarities between the different parties. To be expected: no party is ever going to stand on a platform for less support for deaf children and more bullying. But it’s worth reading the interviews to tease out the slight differences in the party’s approaches.

The students – Karen, Kevin and Maynaka – were all excellent ambassadors for NDCS and their school. They even managed to tease out information about what the MPs will do to celebrate if they win the general election. Answers ranged from having a good sleep, having a curry, and playing some Lego!

Am very proud of the students!

Update: BSL not equal to other languages, says Government

Image courtesy of www.blanchenevile.org.uk

A while ago I blogged about how the Children, Schools and Families Bill might discourge primary schools from the option of teaching British Sign Language if they want to. NDCS has been exchanging a lot of emails recently with the Department for Children, Schools and Families (DCSF) to try and get to the bottom of this.

The good news is that DCSF officials have been willing to engage with us and respond to our questions, which is much appreciated. The bad news is that I completely disagree with pretty much everything they’ve said on this issue.

Going through the arguments, they’ve used…

DCSF say: BSL is not a “modern foreign language”.

I say: The definition in the Bill of language as a “modern foreign language” is arbitrary. BSL is as ‘foreign’ to the English language as is Welsh, which officials have confirmed would be permissible as a modern foreign language.

DCSF say: They want to exclude ‘dead’ languages, like Latin,

I say: Why not just use the definition “modern languages” then?

DCSF say: The proposed programme of study is to require students to “speak” and “listen” in another language

I say: This is a narrow and arbitrary definition of what learning a language involves. BSL is still a language even though it does not involve speaking or listening. BSL does, however, require students to demonstrate productive and receptive skills – that should be regarded as equally important as ‘speaking’ and ‘listening’. Besides, you don’t need to physically speak or listen to a language to understand it. I got a pretty good grade in my French GCSE and I’m as deaf as a dodo.

DCSF say: The proposed programme of study aims to enable children to develop understanding of everyday life, traditions and cultures in other countries.

I say: Aaaarrrghh! Clearly, DCSF have missed the memo about there being such a thing as a deaf community, with its own everyday life, traditions and cultures. Besides, aren’t there other benefits to BSL being more mainstream, like creating a more inclusive and welcoming society that values disabled people, that are as valuable and as important and learning a new foreign language?

DCSF say: A school can still teach BSL, just not as a modern foreign language.

I say: Schools will have to disapply the curriculum or find extra time within the curriculum to teach it in addition to a modern foreign language. I don’t think primary schools have oodles of time. Besides, we’re missing the key point of principle: that BSL should have the same status as other languages.

The Children, Schools and Families Bill has moved to the Lords, where we’re hoping to get this issue raised there. NDCS has just updated their briefing on this issue – which you can download from their website. And watch this space for more info.