Last week Emily Howlett wrote a piece that struck a large personal chord with me for the Limping Chicken entitled "The R Word - Why we Need to Start Talking About It". The article discusses rape and the attitudes towards rape of different groups of people including the Deaf Community.
I thought it was an interesting article because, as Emily rightly points out - rape is something that, understandably, is just not spoken about. I thought some of her reasonings for why perhaps rape is an even harder topic of discussion for deaf people made perfect sense and many of which were things a number of my friends have had to consider, and overcome, in the past.
I also thought that her comments about the fear felt by deaf women around the issue of how and when to report rape or sexual assault were very interesting.
I have never come across (although there may be one!) a charity dedicated to only helping deaf victims or abuse... Many charities offer phone line counseling for victims which is completely inappropriate for deaf people and would be very difficult to access.
As well as this Emily's points about the closeness of Deaf Community making reporting rape even more difficult really hit home with me. Deaf Community is a world where almost everyone knows everyone and you often have mutual friends with other deaf people... I suppose it's a similar feeling to having 100 people in your school year and being sexually assaulted by one of those 100 people... You have to see this person, and all the other people 5 days a week, have lessons with them and socialise with them. Imagine how hard it would be to admit to having been sexually assaulted - particularly if this was denied by the other person. An impossible situation.
This post is a few of my thoughts and comments upon reading the article - I actually wrote them all down on my phone while they were fresh in my memory because I thought some of them were actually quite interesting and impacted alot on the lives of deaf teenagers in particular.
Firstly, I wanted to draw people's attention to the incredible statistic that deaf children and young people are 70% more likely to suffer from mental health issues than their hearing peers and around 50% of deaf children and young people are said to suffer from some kind of mental health problem.
Personally, I think this makes perfect sense and I don't understand why more isn't being done to address this... Plenty of research shows that deaf young people are more likely to be bullied, abused etc. So why is it that projects specialising in mental health in deaf young people are still in such early stages?
My second thought surrounds Personal and Social Health Education, Tutor or Form times and Citizenship in schools... I don't know about other areas but here in Worcestershire if you see your ToD frequently this is most likely to be organised over one of the previously mentioned lessons. While this on the surface seems sensible (you could argue these lessons are less crucial than maths or English perhaps...) this often means that as a deaf teenager you miss out on a wide range of topics and information which is presented to all teenagers through these lessons.
These topics and information include: sexual health (STIs etc), relationships, teen pregnancy, drugs, bullying, mental health... The list is endless, I could go on for hours!
As well as this much of this valuable information is often presented in a completely inaccessible way. I remember the frustration of struggling through hours of you-tube clips and unsubtitled videos where the characters had strange accents and all the information was given quickly and without thought for deaf young people...
It's little wonder that deaf teens are considered more likely to drink, take drugs, get pregnant etc... I mean really, what do people expect when the information about all these issues is just not there in an accessible format! Deaf young people need leaflets, booklets, fact sheets with clear and concise relevant information rather than garbled videos with no subtitles or fast paced group discussion.
I think a great example of this lack of "information" is the knowledge about "sexual language" of deaf teens... I know in the past one parent of a deaf teenager has approached me with concerns about their teenage daughters lack of understanding but as well as this I can draw on my own painfully embarrassing experiences of being the last person to understand the terms LGBT or f**k... Hearing children and young people learn these phrases often in the play-ground or lunch hall by word of mouth and over hearing other people's discussions. Yet for many deaf children and young people this is not possible - or certainly more difficult than for other hearing peers!
The net result from my point of view is that deaf teenagers have a biological understanding of "sex" and "gender" as this part of the curriculum is taught in an accessible way... But often then have little social understanding of "sex" and the dreaded topic of teenage relationships...
Apologies for the rather depressing nature of this post... But I hope it's given a few people "food for thought" as such. I don't think enough emphasis is put on the need for better Personal Social and Health Education for deaf teens but there is a definite need! We're not just statistics... We're young people who apart from not being able to hear so well carry out normal, functioning lives! Why should we be deprived the information and access we need as teenagers in order to inform our selves on issues affecting us.
That said, here are a number of links to sites/charities/information that I've found over the years :)
National Deaf CAMHS (Children and Adolescents Mental Health Services).
Deaf E.A.R.S - education and advice on relationships and sexual health for deaf people in sign language or speech, subtitled videos etc.
Sign Health - information on mental and physical well-being
NDCS Buzz - information about a range of issues including bullying, family and school aimed at deaf children and teenagers.
"Sasha Thorpe: Deaf girl with a hearing family. Full of life and Humour, rather cheeky at times! I wear two hearing aids due to baldness in my cochlea's (Balder than my grandad's head!)."There has been an international campaign today in England and America using Twitter and #Subtitlesnow #captionTHIS in order to raise awareness on lack of subtitles on online videos.
Here's a link to explain the campaign further.
Limping Chicken - Using the #subtitlesnow to highlight inaccessible online videos.
This past year at university I’ve been having problems with subtitles. There are two issues that I have raised.
First issue is videos being shown in lectures that are from YouTube, therefore no transcripts or subtitles. These are being shown for educational purpose, how am I supposed to learn if I cannot fully comprehend what is being said?
The other issue is the student union (SU) are making videos to advertise things that are happening within the university such as the summer ball or to educate students. Half the time these SU videos are voice over’s so I cannot lipread.
The feedback I got originally was an apology from my lecturer and a promise that they will let me know in advance so I can get the disability services at uni to transcribe for me. Several clips from YouTube later, still no warning from lecturer so no transcripts.
And as for the Student Union early on in the year the issues of subtitles was raised in a meeting and they decided they would transcribe the videos, still waiting for this to happen.
Today I tweeted both the University and the student union with #subtitlesnow.
The university are going to subtitles their videos at the end of summer ready for the new academic year :D
The SU will subtitles the welcoming videos (Aimed at new students) but will transcribe the rest. Now I understand their reasons for not being able to subtitles all the videos due to funding and staffing levels.
My university is a small uni, but if they want to grow and gain more students then there need better access for the deaf or hard of hearing. I also think subtitled welcoming videos may trick new hearing impaired students into thinking this university is good at providing to their needs. They need more improvement to their disability services.
Transcripts and subtitles are not the same. If I read a transcript then there no point in watching the video, but with subtitles you can watch the video and read the subs at the same time.
To make it fair… Give transcripts to all students (and in braille) and forget videos. They will save time and resources doing this. Is wrong of me to keep pushing for all videos to be subtitles? Funnily enough there is a small part of me that is afraid to ruffle some feathers! But why should I sit back and miss out on all the fun that is watching these videos?
Another major Issue I am having, relating to my degree in counselling. We have to film ourselves in a counselling role and then analyse ourselves. In essay we have to transcribe our dialogue to show our skills. This difficult for me as the film only shows the side of me and client, therefore no lipreading. The downside to this is i’m not allow to show the clip to anyone else due to confidentiality. I get soooo frustrated that I was tempted to throw my laptop! But I’m not going to let this hold me back from completing my course!
Read more of Sasha's blog posts on her own blog - Deaf Girl in a Hearing World.
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