UK Council on Deafness

access to communication in english for deaf people

The access to communication in english for deaf people report was launched at the Annual Deafness Conference in November 2006.

Deaf people who require language and communication access services often receive a service that is far below the standard that they should reasonably expect. This means that there are literally hundreds of thousands of deaf people for whom the provision of language and communication access services is a right that they are denied. This lack of awareness amongst service providers, employers and deaf people themselves is exacerbated by the dire shortage of the professionals that provide language and communication access services. The report makes recommendations that are practical and achievable and will make a profound difference for the hundreds of thousands of deaf people whose preferred language is English.

The full report can be downloaded by clicking on the following link:

Ace Report (PDF document)

Background to Campaign:

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 £1.5 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 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 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. The resulting report is available below.

The Access to Communication in English Conference held on 30 March 2004 was attended by about 80 delegates and the programme included dissemination of the results from the survey, an overview of the different types of Language Service Professional, details of the registration system, a presentation on the current approach to bilingualism, a presentation on the influences leading to deafened people choosing a particular communication method and four short presentations from users of their experiences. The delegates came from 38 different organisations working with deaf people from throughout the UK. It was successful in achieving its aims of publicising the results of the survey and engaging with more organisations.

The results of the survey were discussed at the Campaign Steering Group meeting on 22.04.04 and it was agreed that although the main focus of the present phase of the campaign was to identify the short- medium- and long-term strategies required to increase provision of Language and Communication Access Services, there were two specific pieces of work that should be carried out without waiting for the end of project report.

The first of these was that the survey had identified a lack of access to services and therefore publicity of service providers’ existing obligations would be of great benefit. This piece of work was led by RNID and a report has been produced with input from all of the participating organisations. The report is being widely distributed.

The second was that there was clear evidence that specific types of Language Service Professionals benefited from having their own professional body to promote recruitment to the profession, awareness of the services available, the quality of service etc. The only professional body that existed for LSPs was the Association of Lipspeakers. To start to address the need for similar arrangements for the other professions a new organisation has been established: the Association of Verbatim Speech to Text Reporters. AVSTTR has 12 members and is receiving practical support from UK Council on Deafness to get established. Shortly after their establishment AVSTTR were informed by Possum (the company that make the hardware used by VSTTRs) that they were ceasing production. As a result of publicity of this and meetings with Possum it is now hoped that the future production will be able to continue.

Individual meetings have been held with each of the participating organisations to establish in greater detail their aspirations for the campaign. The meetings explored the outcomes of the campaign that each organisation wished to see, what they could contribute to those outcomes and what opportunities there were for them to work in partnership with other organisations.

A presentation was made by Paul Hanmer of the National Association of Deafened People, a member of the Campaign Steering Group at the Annual Deafness Conference on 2 November 2004 detailing the progress of the campaign so far and the impact that it is having on deafened people.

The campaign coalition has produced a series of booklets and leaflets to support the aims of the campaign, printed copies are available from UK Council on Deafness, or they can be downloaded from the links below.

Providing access to communication in English for Deaf People: Your duties under the DDA - A guide for service providers, employers and trade organisations explains service providers’ obligations to provide communication support.

Careers as a Language Service Professional - working with deaf people is a simple guide for people considering working as a Language Service Professional

Providing access to communication in English for deaf people: Your rights to communication support under the DDA is a guide to inform deaf people of their rights and what they need to do in order to ensure services provide the right support.

• Providing access to communication in English for deaf people: Your duties under the DDA - PDF Document
• Careers as a Language Service Professional: Working with deaf people - PDF Document
• Providing access to communication in English for deaf people: Your rights to communication support under the DDA - PDF Document
• 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

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