Oh dear, what a palaver. Susie Grant has created VeeSee so that:
[D]eaf people can realize their dreams too, to support the deaf community in an original way that would allow them to sell themselves, show their skills and versatility and allow others to see how creative they are.
To be honest, I find this quite patronising. Although I would agree that Deaf individuals have a hard time of it in terms of access to education, employment and mainstream services, I don’t think VeeSee is the way to go about it. The hearing world needs exposure to the Deaf community and BSL if attitudes are to change, and I don’t think hearing people are going to be interested in features such as ‘See and Learn’, ‘Chat & Discuss’ etc. There’s also a rather disturbing lack of BSL integration on the website. Ok, individual articles have BSL translations, but compared to Sign Community, Deafstation, it’s evident that BSL is not a priority.
Alison Bryan thereafter provided some constructive feedback, which Susie apparently saw as an opportunity to post some really personal attacks on Alison, going as far to suggest that Alison is not allowed to reveal which interpreters have worked for her. Er, what does that have to do with VeeSee? And besides, the interpreters’ Code of Conduct doesn’t apply to Deaf individuals unless they are interpreters themselves! That’s like saying Deaf people are not allowed to recommend, discuss or talk about interpreters! I would say to Susie, stop it now before you go too far.
Also, although VeeSee is quite pleasing on the eye in terms of colours, it is very badly designed. Navigation is difficult, and there is far too much text. It tries to do too much, which makes it difficult to process. If you are a Deaf BSL user, you would find the website difficult to use. The video clips don’t work in Mozilla Firefox, and you have to upgrade to the latest version of Windows Media Player to be able to view the clips in Internet Explorer.
Finally, I’d like to mention that I am on the VeeSee website. I agreed to contribute, to raise awareness of my career progression and how I decided to become a solicitor. When Susie first approached me, she convinced me that doing so would encourage Deaf individuals to become solicitors. I, of course, want to see more Deaf solicitors out there, so I jumped at the chance. However, I would like to point out that I am not a Solicitor, YET. I will qualify on 27 May 2007, and only then am I allowed to refer to myself as a Solicitor. Susie, if you read this, I would be grateful if you could change any reference to “Solicitor” to “Trainee Solicitor”.
As i work in Interpreting, there are no such Code of Conduct bestowed onto the Deaf Public in revealing the identity of their interpreter or nature of any assignments of any level. It is although applied to the Interpreters which they must strictly adhere to. We, the deaf people, – and rightly so, can discuss just about anything positive or negative about an interpreter’s service and again quite rightly, we do not have to discuss if we do not want to.
Information is provided on CACDP’s (IRP) & ASLI’s websites.
Above all, i think VEESEE is in its early stages, could later have a positive impact in hopefully the near future and like Ms Grant says, the production of this website are open to new ideas and any further criticism. Just the key things are to respond as professionally as possible without retailating in a immature manner from either side and to separate any issues with the real issue in hand.