Over 150,000 people in the UK use British Sign Language to communicate. More than half of those users are deaf. Yet, if you are a BSL user watching the daily UK Government Covid-19 briefing, there is no interpreter. Little wonder many people in the Deaf community feel isolated.
Helen Pine is a Deaf Instructor working for Hackney Education. She was born profoundly deaf and uses sign language fluently. “We live in a society where people unconsciously and consciously have a strong sense of audism toward deaf people,” she says.
Part of the problem is that sign language is often viewed as inferior and does not have equal status to spoken language. Pine says: “The messages that are being echoed within medical and educational settings are that the key ingredient to having a successful life for deaf people is through speaking and listening only”.
However, in many cases, BSL is a first language and, for a deaf person, spoken English may or may not be a language that they use.
Pine and her team support over 350 deaf people under the age of 25 in Hackney. She says: “Spoken language is not accessible for many deaf infants and deaf children and it has been proven by research that deaf children are delayed in language development, identity development and struggle with social isolation.”
NHS research suggests that 40 per cent of deaf children experience mental health problems compared to 25 per cent of hearing children.
Her work addresses the language development challenges facing deaf children in education and at home. Pine seeks to encourage a “total communication approach”, where deaf children are taught to speak and sign at the same pace and are given a choice about which they use.
Learning sign language “follows a very similar trajectory to learning a spoken language”, says Martina Curtin, a Hackney-based specialist in speech and language therapy.
Meaning is conveyed through hand gestures or signs. Lip patterns form an important part of sign language too, not only when miming a spoken word but also to add descriptive colour to a phrase. Here Curtin demonstrates, as she puffs out her cheeks while pointing to her mouth to express something that is “really expensive”.
Your body can reflect grammar and meaning as well, the past tense being shown by turning your shoulder back, almost as though along a timeline. “It’s a beautiful language to learn,” she says.
Learning sign language from an early stage can be crucial to a deaf child’s development. Nine out of 10 deaf children are born to hearing parents, most of whom have no experience communicating with a deaf child, so helping parents develop sign language skills is vital.
“It doesn’t matter if it is a spoken or a signed language,” Curtin says, but “the language must be accessible to the child”. She adds: “We see that deaf children born to deaf families are as able when they start school as a child from a hearing family because they have had that early access to language.”
Last week marked National Sign Language Week, an event that is helping to raise awareness of BSL and the Deaf community. But as Curtin says: “There’s still lots of work to do.”
Despite records showing evidence of BSL being used as far back as the 16th century, it was only officially recognised as a language by the UK government in 2003. It still has no legal status, meaning there is no obligation to, for example, include a sign language interpreter for government Covid-19 briefings. “If BSL had legal status, Boris Johnson would have an interpreter in the background,” Curtin says.
Members of the Deaf community still find it difficult to get simple information that most people take for granted. Announcements at train stations or airports are of no use to a deaf person, and Curtin wonders whether screens could be used to better convey information of this sort, as a way of “acknowledging deaf people and including them more in our society”.
The Deaf community has been particularly hit by the pandemic as “gaps in communication have worsened”, says Pine, who usually visits families she is supporting on a weekly basis. Things like wearing facemasks make life more difficult for deaf people, as they “cannot fully participate in conversations when wearing a mask”.
It is this lack of awareness of the Deaf community that makes life so tough. As Pine says: “The mammoth and exhaustive task in navigating through the hearing world can put a strain on our mental wellbeing. All of these are just the tip of the iceberg that we face with our everyday lives, yet it can really hit home with hearing people that this is our reality.”
For Pine, a conscious effort must be made to connect with the Deaf community.
“There are a plethora of Deaf artists, Deaf authors, Deaf teachers, Deaf cooks, Deaf researchers, Deaf comedians that you can follow on social media,” she says. “They will share stories that are personally affecting them, giving you food for thought on cultural audism, and increasing understanding of how you and society can be more inclusive.”
