UK Council on Deafness

Access to Communication in English

Promoting Language and Communication Access Services for deaf people whose preferred language is English.

The campaign to increase the supply of Human Aids to Communication was started by our predecessor, the 'Panel of Four' (a collaboration between The British Association of the Hard of Hearing [now Hearing Concern], The British Deaf Association, The National Deaf Children's Society and The Royal National Institute for Deaf People). The Commission of Enquiry into Human Aids to Communication was established and produced a report - 'Communication is Your Responsibility' - in March 1992.

In April 2002, to mark the 10th anniversary of the report we held a conference, sponsored by the Department for Work and Pensions, that examined the progress since the report, and started the process of looking at what needed to be done to continue the campaign.

The £1 million investment from the government announced on 18th March 2003, will lead to progress being made in promoting communication in BSL (for details go to our BSL Campaign Page). The focus of the Access to Communication in English campaign is to achieve progress in increasing the supply of Language and Communication Access Services for deaf people whose preferred language is English. These include: Lipspeakers, Cued Speech Transliterators, Speech to Text Reporters, Manual Notetakers, Electronic Notetakers, Deafblind Interpreter (Manual) and Deafblind Communicator Guides.

On 4th November 2003 we convened a meeting of organisations interested in participating in the campaign. The meeting was well attended and successful in agreeing the name and aims of the campaign.

The initial aim of the campaign is to identify the short- medium- and long-term strategies required to increase provision of Language and Communication Access Services. Many of the identified strategies will fall within the remit of one or more of our member organisations.

In order to gather background information we have co-ordinated a survey of users experiences when using Language and Communication Access Services. The survey, available by following the link below, was also distributed by all of the participating organisations and then centrally analysed by RNID.

• A Summary of the Report of the Commission of Enquiry into Human Aids to Communication (March 1992)
• Human Aids to Communication Conference (April 2002) Report
• Access to Communication in English Campaign notes
• Access to Communication in English Survey (Word Document)
• Access to Communication in English - a national report into deaf people's experiences of gaining access to public services - PDF document

[Back to top]

UK Council on Deafness, Registered Charity Number 1038448

Your use of this site is in accordance with our Privacy Statement

© UK Council on Deafness, 2003-5.