BSL Week Interview with YSJ Lectures Amanda Smith and Dai O’Brien
SPEAKERS
Katy Harris
Amanda Smith
Dai O’Brien
Natalie Jackson – Interpreter
Katy Harris
Okay, so the first question that I would like to ask is, do you believe that there are barriers to deaf students and staff that they face within education? And particularly higher education like universities? And if they are, then what would you like to discuss about them?
Natalie Jackson
Dai says ‘Shall I go first?
Katy Harris
Yeah, perfect.
Dai O’Brien
I think really, the barriers don’t just start later on in life, barriers start from as soon as a child’s born, and it comes back to accessing language. So, if they can access language, then the childhood and everything, they grow up a lot easier. If they don’t have access to language, whether spoken or sign language. So, you know, it depends which language but if they can’t access any language, that’s where the problems arise. And that’s then means that language deprivation happens, and that delay instantly happens. So, if they’re in a signing environment, it means they access language from day one, if they’re from a deaf family. And that’s one of the hardest things for deaf people that happen through their life, they’re always having to play catch up. So, it means a lot of students arrive at university. And you know, they don’t actually arrive at university because they’ve not got through the educational system, there’s a lot of problems in just getting to university. So, if they actually get access and get to university, there’s still a lot of problems that they have, and a lot of barriers that they face, by actually getting there is a big step. And I think in terms of university – the support for communication, you might get the support for communication that happens. So, for example, in school, a deaf child, you don’t ever get asked what would you like as a deaf child in the education system, you get given support. And that’s sort of what happens, you don’t get to pick who actually matches the needs? Or what do you want as a deaf child at university, that’s where the change has happened because you do get the disability support that says, ‘what would you like?’ and then suddenly, the deaf people get, I don’t know, because they’ve never had that opportunity to try it before. So, I think it’s, you know, in the first year, it’s a bit like experiment and you have to try different things and work out what it is. And some it works really well and for other people, it’s just a lot of barriers, and then trying to get things is very, very difficult. And it could potentially be another year later or two years later, that they realise no, I can’t continue with university and I think that’s one of the massive problems for students – Amanda, what do you think?
Amanda Smith
Yeah, I completely agree with Dai. I think in school with the education – exactly what Dai was saying about the word education – you don’t ever get asked what it is that you’d like. And when you get to college or, and university, you’re looking at actually how many people get to university is a massive issue in terms of access. When you say somebody, they can get to university, if they have the right support. So, if you explain, this is what happens at university, you’re getting notes, you can get a note taker, you can get an interpreter, and you say, you know, the staff don’t decide for you, you get to decide. And people really prefer that because they actually have the options themselves.
Dai O’Brien
So, in terms of getting to university, they don’t actually necessarily know what they need, they don’t have that support in place to explain things. So, it could be, if you know, if we go to sixth form. So, it’s really important for us to go to sixth forms and explain if you are a deaf student, this is what you can access at university. And you can say, you know, if you are disabled, these are the support services that are there. And that’s never brought up at the moment, you know, people don’t really realise that you get a lot of options in terms of the course and you get told about the course. But you don’t ever get told when you’re in sixth form and in college, that there’s all this extra support. And I’m just saying that’s a really key principle that Amanda just brought up, people just have very low expectations. They expect the teacher or the parents and the medical to, you know, everybody has very low expectations of what deaf people can achieve. And I think that’s what happens. People don’t have those visions, and the aims. People don’t have those realistic expectations. And it all comes down to communication. Everything comes down to communication. So it could be that, you know, hearing staff every day, could you meet them in the corridor and say ‘oh, you’re alright? come on over, have a little quick chat if you want’ and for deaf people, we can’t do that. And it might be ‘oh, we can book it on next week on Tuesday two till three because I’ve got an interpreter there.’ So, t’s always that delay that happens and that’s the reality of what happens to deaf people. You can’t just have those initial instant conversations and that spontaneity because it just doesn’t happen. Those natural conversations and for deaf staff that’s what we have to do.
Amanda Smith
It’s very important to have that connection with people. So, it might be that you can just say ‘hello, how are you?’ but you know, you don’t actually get those natural flowing connections because you, you don’t have that free flowing conversation, which can be problematic for the deaf staff.
Dai O’Brien
In terms of our role, so in terms of the deaf staff, as well, and there’s other deaf staff at the university, and we then get extra responsibility. So, we have to do things that we have to book all the interpreters, we’ve got to make sure that we have the support in place. And that provides a lot of extra work, because you’ve got to make sure we provide prep to all the interpreters make sure they’re informed of what’s happening, we have to do all the admin for the invoices for the interpreters, we have to book them all. If there’s any problems, it’s us that have to sort it out. And that can take up a lot of time on top of your actual full-time job. And I think hearing staff, and they don’t necessarily realise they don’t have those extra responsibilities. So it can really feel like you do have all these extra responsibilities and roles that you have to take on.
Amanda Smith
It comes back to awareness. And when you think about a deaf student, if they arrive at the university, the staff really needs to be prepared to provide an interpreter, you can’t book an interpreter last minute, you need to think about what it is that that deaf student needs, and making sure that they have the prep, they have everything. It’s not just, you can’t just throw somebody in the deep end. In terms of the jargon, you’ve got to make sure you think about the needs, and what it is and how you can support them prior to the student arriving.
Dai O’Brien
It’s not the student’s responsibility to chase the lectures, it should be the staff remembering we need to provide this. And you know, everybody’s busy and we understand that. But people always say ‘oh, you know, I’ve forgotten that you need to remind me,’ actually shouldn’t be down to the deaf student, they’ve already got a lot of things to face. And then that extra responsibility of having to chase the lectures can be very, very difficult.
Katy Harris
That’s absolutely brilliant. Thank you very much. Just touching on your last point there Dai in terms of the emotional burdens and the emotional labour that we spoke about in our last meeting – how has the COVID pandemic and the lockdowns influenced this? Have they created more barriers? Has it created more burdens? So, what would you say to that?
Dai O’Brien
I would say yes, it has. Because a lot of people in the world, the world become a smaller place through COVID, in a lot of ways. A lot of people have been stuck at home, and they are having to shield, and they can’t go outside, having to protect themselves. And then that’s massively affected people’s mental health and depression. And now if you know people going out to the shop or anything, you can’t just meet people for coffee, they’re still having to wear masks, everywhere you go, there’s masks in place. So, for hearing people, you can still have those incidental conversations go on ‘oh are you alright’ and off you go. But for deaf people, conversation and communication can be a lot harder. So, if some people use gestures, it’s okay. But you don’t, you know, it’s just a very quick, you can’t have those quick conversations. And that can have a really massive negative emotional impact. And people just feel disconnected with everybody. And so that’s one part of the pandemic. And when you think about the emotional burden in terms of work, of course, everyone, in terms of staff we’re needing to support the students and making sure that the students are supported. So, I’d say that in terms of staff and working with the same as everybody else, there are extra things in terms of booking interpreters, and making sure you book interpreters and the technology. That is a big thing in terms of technology. So, I’m here at work, because at home, my Wi Fi is really, really poor. And so, it’s okay for audio, but it’s very, very difficult. And so, I come to work. So yeah, it’s a slightly higher risk in terms of meeting people and COVID but I have to come to work because the internet is a lot better quality for video. So, there’s a lot of extra things and a lot of other impacts that people don’t even realise for the deaf staff.
Amanda Smith
It’s a real problem because when you think about staff and you think about on campus is really difficult for Dai, because you know, you can’t have those conversations in the corridors, or you can’t just stand away from each other and have that conversation.
Dai O’Brien
It’s true, because you don’t want to, I don’t want people to think I’m not friendly. And it could be a person speaking away and speaking, chatting and saying ‘hi, how are you?’ but because they’ve got a mask on, I have no idea that they’re speaking to me. So, it might look that I’m being ignorant and I’m ignoring them, but I just have no idea for speaking. It also adds, it makes you feel a little bit paranoid because you don’t know if someone’s talking or not. You can’t see the lips moving. So, it’s almost a bit of paranoia that sneaks in because you just have no idea what’s going on behind the masks.
Amanda Smith
With the masks before, staff would come up and touch you. So, they’d know that we’re deaf. And then, if they’d want to communicate, they’d actually come and just tap you on the shoulder to get your attention. And now COVID is that ‘oh no, you can’t go near them, you’ve got the two-metre rule.’ So, there’s that extra role and extra difficulties that happen. So, in terms of gestures, yeah, you can do a wave, but you can’t really get into any more conversation with people.
Dai O’Brien
And, coming back to communication, I think it comes back to, there’s an extra emotional impact and so for example, you know, if you use zooms or teams, it’s a 2D screen and sign language is a 3D language. So, it’s not easy at all trying to make sure you understand what everybody is saying and making sure you’re getting the same access. And it can it’s exactly the same with friends on an evening, it could be on zoom you saying, ‘what’s that person say’ and it’s not clear and then you become almost demotivated and very fed up with it all. And then you can’t be bothered with that.
Amanda Smith
That’s a really interesting point about zoom. So, we’re lucky, we’ve got the technology. So yes, there is the video technology and that is really good for deaf people, because it means that we are able to sign. But in terms of when you’re teaching a group, when you’re looking all the time is very, very difficult with concentration. Hearing people can just almost look, you don’t have to look where the audio is coming from, you could look somewhere else in the room, and you’d still be able to get the audio and you’d be able to understand who’s talking differently. There’s extra complications with zoom, and how things are happening with zoom and when you’re trying to deal with the whole class and different people start talking. It is very, very difficult. And even just a setup of where you sit in and how you are sitting can be very difficult. That turn taking is very, very hard to overcome.
Katy Harris
That’s excellent thank you very much. Just my next question is how can an educational institution help out to break these barriers? I know we discussed before, that pointing is classed as un-polite and not a very British thing to do. But how can these types of things help deaf students and staff?
Dai O’Brien
Basically, the few tips is don’t be frightened to use gestures or writing or other methods or use your phone to communicate. It’s a really good tip, is there’s a voice recognition app that people can download. So, you can speak into it, and it comes up. That just means that there’s a bit of easier communication. If people are frightened to take the masks off and you know, in terms of safety, you have to think about different and alternative strategies of working with deaf people and communicating with them. And there’s lots of other ways you can do that. Don’t be embarrassed to try different things. I think that’s the main thing. So that’s the, that’s the main tip, is really thinking about communication and how you can improve those basic conversations. And I’ll go to Amanda, because you know, she’s a Deaf Awareness trainer herself, so she’ll be able to cover the topic in a bit more depth
Amanda Smith
So exactly, exactly what Dai mentioned – is going back to looking at the strategies and coping strategies of improving communication. So, a lot of people think, oh, I’ve got a mask, I can’t communicate, what is it? And people don’t think actually, you can speak exactly with the mask on it’s exactly the same as with a mask or without. The mask, it can be a little bit of a different sound and it can be a bit more muffled. I’m not sure. And I say oh, maybe have to experiment with the voice recognition and see if there are problems with the masks. I don’t know Katy, if you’ve got an opinion on that – whether the masks change how people’s voices sound. But, in terms of writing, you know, people make sure you have a pen, obviously, you know, you’re not meant to share pens. So, it’s really difficult, you’ve got to think about all these little things about bringing pen and paper. And when you think nowadays, how many people actually carry pen and paper with them. But you can use your phone and you can embed, you know, type onto your phone. So, you’ve got to think about these different communication strategies. But with masks, it’s a really difficult thing. It comes down to common sense. Its common sense and just thinking of how you can communicate with people.
Dai O’Brien
If you haven’t got the paper and pen, most people have a phone. Yeah, everywhere you go people have a phone, so they can just type it in and show it and that’s another way of communicating.
Amanda Smith
Maybe worth everybody downloading the voice recognition app, so it means it’s prepared. If you see a deaf person you can you don’t have to you know, when you see someone in the typing and it takes forever, it means you can just speak into it. So, it might be really worth recommending people to pre-download the voice recognition.
Dai O’Brien
There are three apps that I recommend to the student. Yeah, so one of them is called Make It Big and it means that you can type it and then when you press it, the information, the button, the information comes up bigger, so you can show it. And I think it works on both Apple and Android. The other app that I always recommend, there’s two different ones – One on an Android is Live Transcribe and that one’s a really good app. The other one is on Apple is otter.ai. and that one’s a really good one for Apple and Android both. It’s accessible for both. So, you can use a mix of those three apps to communicate. And that just means that you get a really smooth communication happening. There are other apps available, obviously, I need to say that there are other apps available. But those are the three that I use and recommend.
Katy Harris
That’s perfect. I have heard of otter.ai, I’ve used it to transcribe a podcast before and it is very useful. And Amanda – masks definitely change sounds and voices, they are a lot more muffled and I know people can use visors, but there’s policies of who can and who can’t particularly, so it causes difficulties all round.
Amanda Smith
I had no idea. Yeah, that’s really good to know. That’s, that’s really interesting. So, it means that you have to look a lot more at the facial expression and try and work out what people are doing with the eyes. Because with the mask, if it’s a bit more muffled. I had no idea that hearing people were struggling with mask sound.
Dai O’Brien
When you’re talking about the academics, and what academics can do, and what academic institutions can do. And really, it’s about awareness, they can look at Deaf history, they can look at their language deprivation and the oppression of audism. And that’s a really important thing for people to be aware of, that deafness itself is not a learning disability. You know, it doesn’t mean that people can’t achieve, it just means there’s only one path where you can’t hear. But when you look at society and the oppression and you must speak and what happens in terms of the orders, and all this theory and how people are. And really, you’ve got to think about how sign language is equivalent to spoken language. And once people recognise that and that recognition takes place, then it improves access for everybody. And if people start learning sign language it’s a massive benefit, because it’s another language and it’s a different way of thinking about the world, you get a completely different perspective. So, when you learn sign language, you know, you’re looking at phones, you start picking up different visual cues, and you start seeing things in a different way. You use your eyes, the movement of your eyes, and what you actually visually see improves. So, it’s a massive benefit for everybody. If everybody actually takes up learning sign language.
Katy Harris
That’s perfect, just to tie in with that, as you say, raising awareness – do you think that BSL week does actually make a difference? And how do you think others can get involved?
Dai O’Brien
So, for BSL weak, there’s positives and negatives. So, in terms of awareness, it does improve awareness, people might learn a little bit of basic sign language you might learn – hello, please, and thank you’s, and then might put it up on Twitter and Instagram, social media. But a lot of people think ‘oh, I then learnt sign language!’ or ‘oh, my God, I can sign!’ and they don’t think about everything else that goes on. They don’t know about deaf culture, the oppression that’s taken place. And sometimes it can feel a bit with BSL Awareness Week, it feels a bit surface level, there’s nothing in depth, and there’s not enough information in depth. There’s no critical theory that happens with the deaf community and Deaf culture. And that critical thinking doesn’t take place. And so, there’s, as I say, pros and cons to it both how people can get involved really, social media is so many things online for people. There’s a British Deaf Association and they have a lot of information on their, their signature and they also have really good websites where you can learn BSL and different organisations. And so, there’s lots and lots of resources that’s available online and it’s worth having a search on social media to see what is there so you can use the hashtag BSL week or deaf awareness and you see what comes up. But there’s plenty of resources out there.
Amanda Smith
I’ve completely agree with Dai, it’s very surface level, there’s nothing more in depth. And when you look at the signature’s website, it’s a happy sign language week and that’s it. And you’re just thinking, there’s nothing more rich about it, they need to get into actually looking at all the different aspects of deafness and what happens.
Dai O’Brien
I think it’s really interesting when we come back to campus, Amanda, will be doing both BSL and for awareness courses, so she’ll be setting them back up again. So, I think it’s going to be really worth people looking at the York St. John website and looking at the courses that are going to be available.
Amanda Smith
Obviously, last year, we’ve had to postpone everything, but this September is going to be really interesting. We’re going to start campaigning to get people around campus aware and get that excitement level building up so people can start learning BSL and learning and understanding about the culture and the history that comes with it.
Katy Harris
And just to clarify Amanda, would those courses be academic courses or are they extra-curricular?
Amanda Smith
I believe the York St. John ones – I think it’s extracurricular as well. So, be more extra curriculum. So, it was a way of welcoming everybody.
Dai O’Brien
We have BSL indexes and linguistic degree, so we have those as degrees. So that’s really for the students who are on the degree to learn BSL and linguistics. But we also have extra curriculum courses that we set up as well. And next year, we’re going to start establishing those courses.
Katy Harris
That’s perfect. Thank you very much. I shall stop the recording.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai