Celebrity DJ calls subtitled films at cinema “daft”

Today gave me a whopping reminder of the power of Twitter in campaigns when “celebrity” DJ, Sara Cox managed to unite the deaf community in anger at some fairly idiotic tweets last night.

It’s a hard life being Sara. She’s goes to the cinema on a date and then, shock horror of horrors, finds the film is showing with SUBTITLES! Frankly, I would tweeted in amazement that she managed to chance upon a film that was accessible to deaf people. Instead, she describes this on Twitter as “daft”. A few people point out that actually the subtitles are there to help deaf people access films. She dismisses them with what I can only describe as a naughty Northern swear word. A huge outcry later, still going the last time I looked on Twitter, said offensive tweets were deleted and an apology issued. Apparently, she thought the subtitles were for foreigners. Daft, indeed (here’s a screengrab of her nonsense – courtesy of @Deaf on Twitter) and the story has been picked up in a couple of news outlets including the Telegraph.

Is this enough? She’s said she’s mortified at the offence caused, should we tweeters get some perspective and all move onto something else? Maybe. But I’m still pretty annoyed and disappointed by the whole thing.

Subtitled films are few and far inbetween. Deaf people can’t just turn up to watch a subtitled film. We have to plan our social lives around the few showings around and then sit with our fingers crossed through some rubbish adverts in the hope that the man in the projector box doesn’t screw up the subtitles. Deaf journalist, Charlie Swinbourne, hit the nail on the head in his article for the Guardian a while back. Deaf children and grown ups need more access, not less.

As has been powerfully pointed out by fellow deaf tweeters, thanks to an ill-informed tweet, a celebrity, with lots of followers who seem rather keen and willing to defend her views, has now helped make it legitimate and OK to complain about access for deaf people and made it harder for deaf campaigners to persuade cinema to show more subtitled films. A lot of valuable work, potentially undone. Very frustrating indeed.

I’m sure Sara is genuine in her apology. But the damage has been done and there are no naughty Northern swear words that can take it back.

Freedom of information? Not for deaf children

Last week, the Government promised “a quantum leap of transparency” in public services. Good! A bane of my life as a campaigns officer is trying to get information from public bodies, particularly around services for deaf children.

Much of the time, I ask for fairly basic information – like how many deaf children are known to the council and how many Teachers of the Deaf they employ. Sometimes I ask for something fairly important – has there been a reduction in funding for help for deaf children.

Parents of deaf children are taxpayers too. They need and want this information in order to decide what support is best for their child. Yet I hardly ever come across any local authorities that proactively provides this information to parents.

However, I do come across lots of local authorities that refuse to provide this information until legally required to do so under a Freedom of Information Act request. There are a handful that drag their feet.

I’m getting very grumpy to keep reading complaints from councils that someone had the audacity to ask them to provide information about themselves. Then I get even grumpier when I read the lame excuses. Some have attempted to justify a refusal to provide information on the basis that the information is too complicated and “open to interpretation”. In other words, parents of deaf children won’t understand it, even if the council took the time to explain the context. Others have complained that the data will be “misused”. In other words, the information might be used to hold the public service to account to see if they are doing a good a job as they can to help deaf children. Scandalous.

Parents of deaf children are being patronised by people whose job it is to serve them. If NDCS, a national charity, finds it hard to get this information, even with the force of the Freedom of Information Act behind it, how easy are parents of deaf children going to fare when trying to find out about help for their deaf child?

The stupidity is compounded when you think that this kind of information could be used by parents and campaigning organisations to campaign for better support for deaf children – i.e. more funding.

A quantum leap of transparency can’t come soon enough to end the arrogance of those that think they shouldn’t have to be held to account to parents of deaf children.

Stopping Stoke from slashing services for deaf children

A combination of holidays and post-holiday work mean I haven’t been blogging for a while. But I think I might break the silence to give an update on the Save Services for Deaf Children campaign in Stoke on Trent. Stoke has been one of the big battlegrounds from the start. 2 years ago, they had 8 Teachers of the Deaf. When deaf children start school again in September, there will just be 4. Despite this, the council still maintain the fiction that their changes will improve matters for deaf children in Stoke.

A few campaign tactics from the start have been bearing fruit recently. NDCS set up a petition early on and which attracted nearly 600 signatures. As a result, NDCS was asked to speak before the whole council last week. By all accounts, this had a big impact. One councillor wrote in to NDCS to say it was a “very moving, reasoned and inspiring speech”. The speech got a round of applause and was covered in the respected local paper too.

Encouragingly, the petition has now been unanimously referred to a scrutiny committee within the council which will look again at the decision. Though I’m not holding my breath, the hope is that the council will finally realise they cannot slash the service for deaf children in Stoke by half without it having a devastating impact on deaf children.

The moral of the blog though? Even doing a simple thing like creating and signing a petition can have a big impact in saving services.