Supporting our deaf and BSL community: a reading list

In one of our training sessions recently, we were asked what we do to support any deaf and BSL users in our audience. We came as far as "offering captioning with our spoken content", which is good but definitely not enough. Since, we’ve had conversations and pulled a list of actions we’re taking to ensure our work is more accessible to deaf maternity service users and especially to those whose first language is BSL. Keen on improving your services too? We’ve also got some great reading recommendations.

When we shared about offering captions with our content, Alex Smith (Childbirth Educator/AIMS) - who pushes for making services more accessible for deaf maternity service users - explained:

"Written content and captioning is good and enough for some deaf people, but for those who have been deaf from birth or a very young age, English is a second language learned at school and often with great difficulty.

While hearing children can learn that the sound C, A and T sound like the animal they have always heard being called a cat, profoundly deaf children do not have that sound memory to help. It is meaningless.

Like any second language learned at school, some people never get a good grasp of it and many Deaf people leave school with a poorer command of written English."


Making our work more accessible
Alex has been brilliant in signposting articles and supporting us around actions at Make Birth Better to ensure our work is more accessible for the BSL community.

What stood out from our conversations with Alex:

  • The insight that we always talk about women's voices not being heard and women being silenced. But this is another level on top of that. The BSL community has normalised not being heard (quite literally) by society to an even greater degree that they step back even further and become more removed from services.

  • How hard it was for her daughter (Alex's daughter has a profoundly deaf son) to access BSL language training unless she paid for it herself. They tried applying for a charity grant and were initially told that training the parents in BSL would not directly benefit the child. This is not equity!


Some actions we’re taking
Sharing some examples of actions we’re taking at Make Birth Better:

  • Add a BSL video welcoming deaf users to our website

  • Asking training attendees in advance of training if they have any additional communication needs

  • Ask our MBB Champions / network if we have any BSL speakers so we can recruit their support if needed

  • Raise awareness of this issue to our community via social media / a blog / relevant research

  • Link to any relevant support organisations who support people facing this challenge

  • Including 'deaf maternity users' as part of our training deck around susceptibility to birth trauma


Reading list
Here’s a great list of articles recommended by Alex to get you started on making maternity services more accessible to deaf and BSL users too.

  • Inequalities AND Unreasonable Adjustments: Are D/deaf women being given a detrimental care pathway in the name of risk assessment? by All4Maternity

 
Evelien DochertyMake Birth Better