Following the Supporting VI students workshops, we ran a Supporting HI students workshop, as an in person session on 11th June. According to the RNID (Royal National Institute for Deaf People), there are about 18 million people in the UK who are deaf, have hearing loss or tinnitus, with around 1 in 3 adults in the UK being deaf, experiencing hearing loss or tinnitus. Hearing loss and hearing impairment therefore affects many people, including university students and staff, but awareness of these conditions is often poor. There are adjustments we can make that will make a significant difference to the experience of hearing impaired students. This workshop was intended to provide student perspective on the experience of being a deaf student in higher education, and the impact that failure to act inclusively makes to that, as well as offering some guidance on digital tools and behaviours to better support hearing impaired students (and staff). <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Timing of any training session is difficult, especially if you want academic staff to attend – when is a good time to hold training? This has been especially difficult since semesterisation as the shape of the academic year has changed and previous times we knew were good to hold training are not necessarily a good time any more. This date was picked amongst available times as being past the exam period, but well before the schools broke up for summer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Aside from timing, difficulty in getting staff to attend any digital training, and especially accessibility training, continues. Given the contraction in most HE institutions, staff are typically dealing with increased workloads, making finding time to attend training more challenging. A notable feature of running accessibility training in recent years has been that we get far better attendance from professional services staff than academic staff. We are rethinking how we promote sessions to try to better engage academic staff, as this seems to be a factor. However, it does seem that in general professional services managers seem to be better at allowing or encouraging staff to take training opportunities for professional development, which seems rarer for those on academic or research contracts. Whilst we’re delighted that so many professional services staff want to improve awareness and accessible practice, the low engagement from teaching staff presents a challenge, as their practice has such a huge impact on the university experience of disabled students. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
I’ve been privileged to work with Poppy Fynes, a deaf computer science phd student at York, who kindly presented at the workshop. We wanted the workshop to be grounded in student experience and were fortunate that Poppy was willing to share her experiences. Having studied at York as an undergraduate and now as a postgraduate, Poppy was able to give perspective of the impact of poor accommodation at different levels of study. As Poppy is such an engaging presenter and so articulate about her experiences, I was disappointed that we had so few teaching staff present, as her insights are really valuable and it would have been great for more academics to hear those.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A point that is often overlooked but that Poppy made well, is the issue of cognitive load. The concentration required for lip reading or the extra effort to switch between main content and captions is mentally tiring. The additional burden of this effort is not typically visible and is often easily forgotten, with people thinking only in terms of the hearing impairment and access to audio information, rather than the wider implications. This kind of nuanced awareness of the experience of living with hearing impairment is really important to help provide a truly inclusive environment and holistic support to students. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
We were also fortunate to have two members of hearing impaired staff attending the session, who also shared some of their experiences. This was valuable, not least because it helped demonstrate what the range of hearing impairment can be. No disability is a monolith but although understanding the variation in experience is important, it is something people often miss. This is especially significant around hearing impairments, as this can encompass not only a broad spectrum of experience of deafness, hearing impairment and hearing loss, but also in the range of different technical and social solutions to communication, such as different types of hearing aid, cochlear implants, different captioning tools, as well as lip reading and signing. There are a wide variety of experiences and approaches which require different support. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
We were also lucky to also have contributions from a colleague from the Audio Visual team, which gave a good perspective on the technical hardware challenges in supporting those with hearing impairment across the university. It also provided an insight into the work of the Audio Visual team in this area, such as the difficulties around replacing older kit and problems of reliance on contractors’ assurances that hearing loops have been properly fitted, when often they have not been. The latter can give the appearance of rooms being more accessible than they actually are. It also prompted a really interesting discussion around the range of technology employed in different hearing aids and difficulty in supporting a diverse student and staff base who may have hearing aids working on very different principles. Although we don’t necessarily need people to understand the full details of situations like this, I think this type of problem is important to share more widely, as people often assume there are easy, or at least relatively straightforward technological solutions to issues of accessibility, whereas these issues are often complex. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
I wanted the workshop to be primarily centred on student experience and to promote discussion, but also wanted to create a quick reference resource, as well as using the event as a basis for developing wider guidance. For the quick reference resource, I created a short Google slide deck, which I ran through at the start of the session and shared with participants afterwards. This provided the essential information around microphones and captioning, plus links to key resources and support. I’m working on writing up the wider guidance from the session and ultimately would like to create an online resource from this. Long term I hope that this would improve the experience of hearing impaired students, and also better prepare staff, who often want to support students and colleagues but may be unaware of adjustments to make. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"