Next year I’ll be going to the wedding of two Deaf people. I’m expecting other Deaf people to be there too. As I’ve been thinking about learning British Sign Language (BSL) for years, I saw this as an ideal opportunity to finally get started. Doing this has also made me interested to find out what the community has gone through over the years and what, if any, progress seems to have been made.
There are around 12 million people with some form of hearing loss in the UK and three million of those people are under 60. In addition, around 4.4 million are of working age. Around 900,000 people are severely or profoundly deaf.
One major thing I have learned from my reading and research is that there is a strong sense of cultural identity within the Deaf community – the use of the capital ‘D’ for the community of people who have been deaf all their lives being one symbol of this. The position I have seen being increasingly confidently expressed is that being deaf isn’t the problem – society is.
Obstacles remain for Deaf people
There’s an interesting programme from 1972 to 1973 on the BBC iPlayer called The Curtain of Silence.
While we are shown amazing work being done with Deaf children, the presenter tells us that it was “a lottery” as to whether such services were available, meaning that too many children were slipping “through the net”. There were too few appropriate school places and too few trained teachers. Talented people were “limited to jobs below their abilities” and, as the presenter puts it, “In our loquacious society, the Deaf are linguistic lepers” – a harsh description but this is how it must indeed have felt.
Has anything actually changed since then? Well, apparently yes and no.
Sadly, general negative perceptions and lack of accessibility still seem to remain today. The following is the experience of a hospital patient who was taken into an operation despite not having the problem properly explained to her:
“I repeatedly pointed to an interpreter services poster on the wall, and I handed staff a BSL interpreter’s card on two separate occasions, but I was left abandoned and ignored”, she explains. “It was a terrifying experience, leaving me feeling scared and alone, like I was in prison.”
There are also people from the community who say that hearing people ignore them and ‘run away’. Even celebrities have negative experiences, such as being put into a separate screening room at a film premiere in order to view the film with subtitles – effectively segregation.
Despite the struggles and obstacles, there are many examples of Deaf people breaking through and achieving amazing things. Musicians, artists, nurses, footballers, politicians, businesspeople, decorators, actors and so many more.
Aids and implants
Whilst technology has advanced significantly, there is an emphasis in what I have read that the likes of hearing aids and cochlear implants are not cures.
Typically, funding is only available for one implant per person. These can significantly improve the ability to hear, but still require maintenance, and the user can take a long time to adapt (e.g. using speech therapists for months or even years). If you have certain conditions such as a missing auditory nerve or particular types of inner-ear scarring, you may not be able to get one.
Hearing aids are much more readily available and unlike cochlear implants you can have two (as my own father had). You can even buy them online. They are less obvious too, which some might see as an advantage. However, not everyone benefits from them.
I should also mention hearing loops, which can connect to hearing aids wirelessly. Their ranges vary and can be used in almost any situation. Sadly, an anonymous Deaf person online told me that in some places staff are poorly trained in how to use them and gave one example where the technology simply didn’t work, despite signage saying it was available.
Cure deafness or cure society?
Interestingly, while it might be thought that cochlear implant technology would be widely welcomed, some Deaf people apparently see their use as a denial of Deaf identity, a betrayal of ‘Deaf culture’. I gather from my reading that it’s seen by some as buying into a medical view of deafness as an ‘abnormality that should be cured’. On the contrary, as reported in that article by a student at an American university where all the lectures are signed, a supportive environment can allow the development of a confident cultural identity of being “Deaf and … darn proud of it”.
The actor, Rose Ayling-Ellis, who did so much to draw attention to raise awareness of deafness on Strictly Come Dancing, is a strong advocate for greater societal inclusion of Deaf people. As she puts is, “I am disabled because I live and work in a world that disables me”.
British Sign Language: a slow road to recognition
It was reported that one in ten people would actively “avoid communicating with a deaf person”, but when you look into it further it appears this may be because they simply do not know how to communicate.
The European Parliament gave support for the recognition of sign languages in 1988. The trailblazing Deaf MP Jack Ashley had been campaigning for this level of recognition for BSL for years. However, it wasn’t until 2003 that the UK recognised it as a language and only in 2022 was it actually given legal recognition.
I asked Emeritus Professor Graham Turner of the British Deaf Association about the delays:
“The 2003 ‘recognition’ was paper-thin in practice and led to next-to-no change in Deaf people’s lives. There is really no relationship between the 2003 statement and the 2022 Act – I wouldn’t think of one as having presaged the other in any meaningful sense. So it’s less relevant to ask why 19 years elapsed between them than to ask why, when BSL research demonstrating its grammatical nature has been in place since the 1970s, it took half a century for legislative acknowledgment of that linguistic status.”
A prospective GCSE in British Sign Language
It gets better, though. This year sees the start of a consultation about a GCSE in BSL. It won’t be compulsory, but many say it will prove very popular. Young minds are well known to have greater facility with language learning, so offering a qualification at this level is ideal.
Emeritus Professor Turner also gave me his views on the GCSE:
“We don’t expect it to lead to every school in the country offering BSL, nor every child learning some signing. But if a larger proportion of the population developed full or at least emerging fluency in BSL as a result of high quality teaching by professional Deaf BSL teachers, and thereby came to understand something of its extraordinary nature and that of the Deaf community, we would be greatly in favour of such a development.”
The opening line is an interesting comment. However, it’s important to note that there has been a serious shortage of sign language tutors and interpreters for a long time. If not enough schools offer it, then we won’t see a long-term increase in tutor numbers.
An introduction to British Sign Language
I have a challenge for you. The following chart shows the different BSL signs for our alphabet. Take a bit of time to learn these – it’s a great first step.
What the future holds
In the near future, we can – for all our benefits – hope to see a world where communication with the Deaf community improves. The aim is for more younger people to have some sort of skill in BSL and the ability to break down barriers. No doubt we will also see more and more inspiring achievements from many of the hugely talented Deaf people out there, their public profile further helping to raise awareness.
I would hope that better knowledge and increased funding have now reduced the postcode lottery aspect of support services, though I suspect that may still be an issue. But there does seem to be some good news, for example the allocation of funding for delivering NHS Talking Therapies in BSL. I would also like to feel that there is an adequate range of affordable options for parents to learn BSL so they can communicate with their children. It would be great to see more hearing loop systems too, alongside a universally high standard of training.
What have I learned overall? That it’s time for society to adapt to Deaf people. It’s been the other way round for too long.
