University of College London’s Deafness, Cognition and Language Research Centre is currently carrying out some valuable research into BSL and Deaf people. They need volunteers to participate in their research projects.
If you’re interested, go here.
I am a Participant, because I am passionate about BSL and this research will help the Deaf community to press the Government for official recognition as a whole.
While not professing to be an academically recognised researcher into the field of Deaf Studies, I’d like to present some thoughts on the current UK Deaf community: past, present and the future.
Past
Traditionally, the Deaf community has been centred around Deaf Clubs across the country. There are approximately 250 local Deaf Clubs ((Paddy Ladd, Understanding Deaf Culture, 46)) in the UK, with around 50 in London alone. Sadly many are in decline as older generations of Deaf people give way to younger generations, who are usually not interested in Deaf Clubs and what they represent. From working with RAD and in RAD centres around London, I have seen first hand the importance of such Deaf Clubs; a meeting point on a weekly basis for Deaf individuals to go and meet their friends, acquaintances and enemies, to play bingo, have a nice lunch or a bevvy or two, and catch up on news and gossip.
However, they are considered to be uncool by young Deaf people. Also, the mainstreaming of Deaf children, advances in technology, such as SMS, and greater mobility and access to other parts of the country ((Ladd, as above n.1, 47)), have rendered some Deaf Clubs obsolete.
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”.
I was reading this post by funnyoldlife and it brought to mind the time when I considered studying Law and Japanese at university, during the time I was studying my A Levels and deciding which universities to apply to through UCAS and which courses.
During secondary school, I learnt Welsh, French and German, eventually going on to study German at GCSE and A Level. I have always harboured a desire to learn Japanese and/or Mandarin, and this is why I considered studying Japanese at university. However, I was put off when I learnt that spoken Japanese relies heavily on intonation to inflect the meaning of spoken words. I thought to myself: “how can I learn to speak Japanese if I won’t be able to lipread when it’s being intoned in a certain way?”.
Now, funnyoldlife has said he learnt Japanese at university. Time for me to go to college, methinks! One question though: what can you do in terms of communication support?
Oh yes, I returned from holidaying in Gran Canaria a week ago today. You’re probably all wondering: “hasn’t he come back yet?”, “didn’t he enjoy it to not mention anything about it at all?”. Never fear, I am back (not that you care, of course), and I did enjoy our little holiday.
We stayed at the Guanabara Park Apartments (NB. the first picture on that page is not Guanabara Park, it’s Portonovo) in Puerto Rico, on what was basically a cheap Teletext holiday. For the price we paid, we were happy with the accommodation, even though it was 170 steps from the local shopping/restaurant area to the apartments. Hey, a bit of exercise never did anyone any harm.
The weather was great – it was really warm in the sun, with very strong sunrays, but cool in the shade and during the night. It meant you could have a nice hot shower without sweating buckets while trying to dry yourself in vain, and sleep through the night without sweating buckets into the sheets. I came home with a reasonable tan – not bad for 7 days.
I came back refreshed and raring to go; shame it only took a day back at work to get rid of that fresh feeling!