Digital inclusion and deafness

Rough notes from the E-engagement stream of the National Digital Inclusion Conference. Tuesday 9.30 am.

Deafness can be an invisible barrier to inclusion. Jeff McWhinney has been explaining to the e-engagement stream at NDI09 the role of technology to ensure deaf people can effective access public services.

Jeff started by sharing some key stats:

• There are 70,000 deaf people in the UK who actively use BSL and around 180,000 or so are able to use it;
• There are less than 700 fully qualified sign language interpreters in the UK;
• The waiting time to book interpreter can be 2 weeks in London, and up to 6 weewks in remote parts of the UK.
  In Shetland deaf people can end up having to group important meetings into two-day slots just a few times a year for an interpreter to fly in.
• Two out of eighty-five authorities at a conference in March could guarantee
• Deaf people are seen as invisible but their needs remain.

And then Jeff went on to talk about the Significant call centre - a video-conferencing tool linking up authorities to sign-language interpreters in minutes rather than weeks.

But how can services like Significant be made available to all people who need them?

Does the market solve the problem?
The textphone service provided by BT is still an old analogue service - and BT have little motivation to upgrade it and to provide a better service.

What about the voluntary sector?
There are good services for deaf people - but we end up in silo mentality. Does an older deaf person go to a service for older people who don't know how to deal with their deafness, or to a support organisation for deaf people which doesn't know how to support their issues from ageing?

SMEs, Getting Procurement Right & Co-ompetition
Big technology providers shouldn't say 'no - it can't be done': they should point to and partner with the SMEs who can meet real needs. Getting procurement right matters. And in a 'social enterprising' space we need to act co-operatively but also make sure there is competition to provide the best possible services...