Deafness in the Pandemic

Deaf Awareness Week takes place from 2 to 8 May. We're delighted that students from Dalziel High School were able to write a blog for us about issues they faced during the Pandemic. Many thanks to the blog's authors Rubbi Brown, Sophie Gray, Murray Neilson and John Ward, and Patricia Nielsen for helping to arrange the blog.

Hello. We are four S1 aural deaf students at Dalziel High School. This means that we have some level of hearing thanks to having hearing aids or cochlear implants, but we do not use sign language (BSL). We want to tell you a little bit about how we were affected during the Covid pandemic.

Being able to see lip patterns when people are speaking is really important when you are deaf. This means that because everyone had to wear masks, it was not possible for us to see their mouths. It’s difficult anyway to hear people in school but the masks made it even harder as voices were muffled. And it’s not just that the masks covered peoples’ mouths but that we could not see facial expressions either. This is an important part of communication when you are deaf as we can usually tell by looking if someone is feeling happy or sad or upset or whatever other emotion.

Some teachers wore see-through visors instead of masks and this made it a bit easier to understand what was going on.

We are lucky in our school because we have a Hearing-Impaired Department and our HID teachers try to make sure that all the other teachers remember that we need them to look at us and repeat instructions. They might also remind teachers that we need subtitles if we are watching anything on screen and that we cannot watch things and take notes at the same time.

Online teaching during lockdown was also a challenge because, although we could see the teacher, we could not see other pupils so we were missing all the visual clues that we use to help us to understand what is being taught. Even our HID teachers struggled to tell which of us was speaking. Sometimes the audio quality was poor or there were no subtitles for the lessons.

When we were out and about, especially in crowded areas, it all got really chatty, and you didn’t really know who you were talking to. It could be overwhelming and sometimes we felt really stressed out. This can cause us to feel angry and just drop out of the conversation.

Sometimes, it feels as though we are not included in the conversation because people are not looking at us and making eye contact. This is very frustrating and that is the case even when there is no pandemic. In shops there is always background music and that is a huge problem for us. We are trying to speak to the people we are with and the shop assistants but all we can really hear is the music. Does it need to be so loud?

If you want to communicate with us, please do the following:

· If you have to wear a mask, can it be a visor please?

· Please speak slowly

· If you have to wear a mask, can it be a visor please?

· Please speak slowly

· Look at us directly so that we can see your lip patterns

· Please speak one at a time in a group

· Lower background music in public spaces

· Please repeat yourself if I have not understood you

· Be patient with us – we want to understand you

Thank you for taking time to read this. We really appreciate it.