#DeafMust No deaf awareness in this eye clinic.

Deaf awareness from staff makes the difference between hospital appointments being mostly-accessible and completely inaccessible (and majorly stressful).

I had a hospital appointment with an eye clinic because I was having some problems with my vision.

The consultation got off to a bad start when the Clinician insisted on the door being left open and I explained I was deaf and needed it to be closed so I could hear the consultation. Clinician's excuse was that people came in and out of consultation rooms to work. I said that was fine as long as they were quiet and closed the door behind them.

I told the Clinician that I am deafer than most people realise from my speech, hearing aids do not give me perfect hearing and that I need to lipread people to understand speech.

Despite being told I needed to lipread which requires me to look at people's faces, Clinician started doing eye tests which involved covering one of my eyes then the other while talking to me. As I could not understand her, I tried to look at her which wrecked the test. She would not explain the test in advance or give me any warning of instructions. We had to do some tests in the noisy area we'd closed the door from including going into another room (which partner closed door to) where it was made dark. Again no advance explanation while I could lipread so I did more things incorrectly because I could not understand the instructions.

Throughout the consultation I repeatedly asked Clinician to speak louder and more slowly which she did not do. She got very grumpy with me whenever I asked her to repeat herself. I couldn't hear her well, but I could see the annoyed facial expression and body language. At the end she told me my reported issues were not a part of my known-condition with clear implications that she did not think my issues were genuine. She reluctantly agreed to refer me to see one of the doctors -- but that referral never arrived.

It was another 4 years before I got an explanation for the vision problems - my GP referred me to one of the doctors Clinician should have referred me to!

#DeafMust Casual discrimination in prospective employment

I've been trying to think of things to write about for the #DeafMust campaign. I keep thinking . o O ( I'm lucky, I haven't had much discrimination for my deafness... ) before thinking of yet another example...

After I graduated from university I started applying for jobs, some at the local library service as my degree is in information management and these looked like viable entry level jobs. One of the librarian jobs I applied for had a "tour of the library" with info being provided about parts of the job.

A small group of us going for this job were shown the main library area for shelving books, front desks for loans and returns of books and other materials, public computers where patrons needed technical support, the back office for moving books around and logging them in and out of the computer system and finally the other office where staff handled incoming calls or phoned people about overdue loans.

The idea of the role was that everyone did all of these 5 activities in approximately equal amounts. As I'm deaf and I can't hear the phone I asked the guide if there was likely to be a chance that I could swap phone-shifts with colleagues and cover more of the other roles, especially technical support of public PCs which we were told most staff hated. I explained that it would be dishonest of me to try and do phonecalls which I couldn't hear.

The reply was "No, that would not be possible, everyone has to be treated the same".

I was quite shocked at this, as I knew that employers were supposed to make adjustments for disabled staff, and I thought I was making a reasonable proposal. I wasn't being lazy, I was being honest... I can't 100% remember now, but I think I ended up withdrawing my application.

I now know that response was probably unlawful.

Sadly "We have to treat everyone the same" is very common. BUT (while I am not a lawyer), it is almost certainly not a legitimate justification for not making an adjustment for deaf or disabled employees.

And finally, while I emphatically do not believe "you asked the wrong person" or "you asked in the wrong way" as excuses for not making adjustments - in this case, that guide was probably not the best person for me to have asked. It wasn't her decision to make. If I had asked HR or a senior manager I may well have been able to get phones changed for me as I has been done in other jobs I have had. I am confident none of my colleagues have resented me not using the phone, I make up for it in other ways.

#DeafMust Suing HMRC for deafness discrimination over phones

In 2013 I successfully sued HMRC for 'disability discrimination' with the help of Unity Law (which is now Fry Law) for their repeated requirement that I use telephones to contact them.

The only thing I regret is that I did not take legal action several years earlier.

When government departments are being discriminatory and poorly accessible I DO tell them I successfully sued HMRC for disability discrimination and ask them if they wish me to sue them too!

For a summary (but still quite long) overview of my HMRC case including deafness issues.

I also summarised and timelined all my dealings with Unity Law so people can see that it isn't scary, just quite a lot of work.

HMRC ended up paying me significant financial compensation, writing me an apology and paying my legal costs (covering legal costs is less likely to be possible now due to something called Qualified One Way Costs Shifting).

Four main ways of using a relay service

Four main modes for using a relay service.

I have explained the basics of how textphones and relay works including calling-out info in my post Deaf and speech impaired people's access to telephones which you should read before this post.

This post has been edited to reflect changes since 2014 with the introduction of BT's Next Generation Text-Relay, known as NGT but probably needs restructuring entirely to make more sense.

This post explains a little bit more about the roles the caller, relay operator and recipient make in three different types of call using relay.
Textphone to Telephone
Voice Carry Over (VCO)
Hearing Carry Over (HCO)
Textphone to Textphone via TextRelay

1. Textphone to Telephone via TextRelay

This is one of the most common ways of using a relay service with the relay operator typing for the textphone user and speaking for the telephone user.



1. The textphone user types their words out on a textphone which are read by the relay operator to the telephone user.
2. The telephone user hears the relay operator speaking on their phone handset and once it is their turn to speak speaks their reply back to the relay operator.
3. Relay operator types out the telephone user's spoken reply as best as they can (but they aren't verbatim typists) which appears as text on the textphone user's screen.

Each person has to say Go Ahead or "over" or type GA (GA means go ahead) to end their turn and allow the other person to speak or type. Calls are ended with SK SK which means "stop keying" from telegraphy. There are other shortcodes in varying levels of use e.g Plz, thx.

Since the introduction of NGT Lite in 2014 most computers running Windows, MacOS, or linux, or tablets and smartphones running iOS or Android can act like a textphone.

Historically hardware textphone users could not access the audio of the call. Since NGT was introduced the user may now be able to access the audio during the call. The telephone users still cannot see the typed words.

2. Voice Carry Over (VCO)

Voice carry over (VCO) mode is usually used by people who cannot hear but wish to speak for themselves. This requires a textphone which has a handset like one of the ones below or NGT-Lite software.

               

The first image shows a woman using a Uniphone branded textphone holding the handset in the usual way but reading the relayed text from the screen.

The second image shows a woman using a Screenphone which does not have a keyboard but has a larger screen. The close up zoom in of the screen shows the words "Hello Geoff, how are you today".

The textphone user speaks (voices) for themselves into their textphone or telephone handset. The telephone user can hear the textphone user speaking as usual but cannot just reply instantly as usual. When the textphone user has finished speaking they have to let the operator know they've finished by saying Go Ahead. This is an improvement on the old-textphone-system where a button had to be pressed with a 1-2 second 'change over time'.

When the telephone user has finished speaking they say "Go ahead" or "over" and the relay operator will let the deaf person know they can now speak again.

Historically textphone users could not access the audio of the call, but that has now changed with NGT. NGT was designed with the intention of encouraging more people to use voice carry over mode although I am not sure this has happened in practice.

3. Hearing Carry Over

Hearing Carry Over (HCO) is usually used by people who cannot or do not wish to speak but can hear what is said. Like with voice carry over this requires a textphone with a handset or NGT Lite.

The textphone user types what they wish to say and the relay operator speaks this to the telephone user. When the textphone user has finished typing they type GA so the operator knows to tell the other person they can speak and be heard by the speech impaired caller. When the telephone user has finished speaking they say "go ahead" or "over" and the textphone user will know it is their turn to type again.

NGT has eliminated the 1-2 second mode switching.

4. Textphone to Textphone (with and without relay)

The call connects with each textphone connecting by BT Text Direct (service provider of TextRelay)'s servers.

These days deaf people tend not to use textphone to textphone to communicate with one another as it has been superseded by SMS, text and video chat of various kinds etc.

The main reasons people will use this mode are to get the 60% call rebate; get clearer call progress messages and if their textphone isn't compatible with the other person's (TextRelay eliminates this issue).