Why don’t disability awareness DVDs have subtitles? What’s that about? I’ve just received one in the post – it’s pretty awful all round but that’s not the point here (but still a point worth discussing elsewhere). The point is how can any disability trainer hope to demonstrate inclusion when they don’t even subtitle their own training material? I know from experience that the team making the DVD are not necessarily au fait with the issues involved (yes, I know they should be, but so often are not) which is why we often end up with a crap unsubtitled product that we can’t ever use.

I had an interesting experience the other day. I was watching three people in a cafe – it was clear one was a deaf person, the other was her hearing line manager and the third was the interpreter (how do I know this? body language & type of interaction, but that’s another story). The manager talked most of the time but it was clear she wanted the deaf person to talk and offer her opinions. She (the deaf staff member) and the interpreter looked at each other the whole time and there was very little eye contact with the manager. Anyone observing and not being aware of who was who, would simply have seen two friends chatting with the third person slightly out of the loop. We (as deaf people) would be furious if people left us out of the loop eg: the manager and the interpreter talking to each other and yes this is exactly what we often do ourselves – leave the hearing person out! How can we hope to progress in the workplace if this is what we do? Just a thought.

(PS : by the way, I did not recognise any of the three people )

I went to my local ENT (Adult audiology next to the Nuffield since you ask) last week and what do you know? It is exactly the same – apart from the blancmange walls, the staff are as rude and surly as ever. They have a notice (we’ve all seen them) which says “Abuse, threats, violence will not be tolerated. We want to help you but we will not hesitate to protect our staff”. If that isn’t a threat, then I don’t know what is. Don’t they ever stop to think why customers / patients/ clients (in other words, us) might get angry and / or upset? How’s this for starters – when I went to collect my prescription from the same hospital, the chairs face away from the pharmacy so you can’t see if they are calling (or even waving frantically, which of course they never would). Are they messing with our heads or what?

I have heard this twice recently – where organisations have an underspend and so they decide to use up the money by having a jamboree at a posh hotel for the staff (usually hearing)  & volunteers (usually deaf) .  Is this really the best way to use up the left over money? Why not just write a cheque to all the deaf volunteers instead? Without them, there wouldn’t even be a project!