Hi Hilary,
As I saw a 'recall' message on this I didn't reply the other day in case
you hadn't meant to send it to this list.
I suspect you're not being asked to translate BSL in a PDF format, that's
an artifact of the deaf person's language difficulty - also they might say
they would prefer it in a website format or something but that may not be
the best option for you or them.
British Sign Language (BSL) users often with English language as a result
of how they have learned language. BSL is structured very differently
from English so even BSL users with good English are often translating in
their head.
A quote I found the other day which I found helpful:
“Deafness will impact on a range of skills that students will need
to learn including: listening skills; attention and concentration;
language development; literacy skills; working memory; auditory memory;
processing time; incidental learning; social skills; self-esteem and
learning style.”
NDCS (2012) Supporting Achievement of young deaf people in Further Education.
(You can download it for free from their website if you create a login)
Based on the text you've sent over this person's English language skills
may not be very strong. I know several BSL using computer scientists who
have not needed strong English to get by at university or in the workplace
if they have good BSL support. It's almost a long standing joke in
computer science that the hearing people can barely string a sentence
together and it's an area where say someone with severe dyslexia can
excel! However I do understand Deaf-English can be hard to get your head
around as even with experience of it and practice (and some BSL knowledge)
it can be difficult to understand what the deaf person means and how much
they have understood you when using textual communication methods.
While you could provide a translation of your leaflet (you can hire
interpreters to do that to video) I wonder if a better option would be to
invite this person to meet you and provide an interpreter for that
appointment. That way you can ask them questions and you could include an
interpretation of your information as part of that. I suspect most HEIs
can't justify BSL interpretations of videos in anticipation of a BSL user
applying as many can understand that level of English but if a request is
made I think some BSL has to be provided.
Another idea I have is for you to join the CHESSFORUM which is
specifically about supporting deaf students in HE and pass your post
there. It's on jiscmail. There's people from HEIs who have a lot of deaf
students who will be able to give better advice than I can as I've not
personally supported many BSL users with English difficulties.
Natalya
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