BSL users and Employment access

There are 75,000 BSL users and their daily communication depends on the 600 odd qualified sign language interpreters. A further 250,000 deaf people are unable to communicate in a large group such as team meetings without one. An interpreter can only serve 2-3 customers per day and the average wait for an interpreter in urban areas is 2 weeks and in remote rural areas 6 weeks (RNID 2006). An average video interpreter can serve up to 15 customers per day - an efficiency increase of at least 750% per interpreter. However this is not recognised by the Government and the dire employability prospects amongst deaf people continues.
Deaf people seeking employment is severely hindered by the fact that Job Centres do not have videophones installed to enable them to call prospective employers via a video interpreter. This has been brought to the attention of the Employment Services but to date not much has been done to address this in spite of promises made since Summer 2006 of installing videophones in Job Centres.
This continues into employment where horror stories abound like a deaf entrepreneur going out of business because their local Access to Work centre took more than six months to come to a decision over his employment access. Once they were ready he has already gone under - in short the support came too late and another family is now dependent on State benefits....

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Entertainment

Tags:

• BSL
• users
• and
• Employment
• access