ACE

Access to Communication in English

AVSTTR Representative - Lisa Cordaro

 

Nearly 4.5 million, half of the deaf and hard of hearing people in the UK, find they can’t communicate with public services because of the lack of communication support. As one of the members of the ACE coalition we’re campaigning for access to public services for deaf and hard of hearing people.
The ACE Coalition is made up of the following organisations:-

Aberdeen and North East Deaf Society
Association of Lipspeakers
Association of Verbatim Speech to Text Reporters
British Institute of Verbatim Reporters
The Council for the Advancement of Communication with Deaf People
Cued Speech Association UK
DeafBlind UK
DeafPLUS
Hearing Concern
LINK Centre for Deafened People
National Association of Deafened People
Sense
UK Council on Deafness

 

The campaign focuses on three main areas:

 

Increasing the number of language service professionals (LSPs) through training

Raising awareness among deaf and hearing people

Professional development for the associations that represent lipspeakers and speech to text reporters

 

The Report:

 

ACE receive regular evidence of a lack of communcation support within public services. As a result, the member organisations commissioned research into deaf and hard of hearing people’s experiences, the findings of which are detailed in the ACE Report, co-ordinated in 1995.

We surveyed 478 deaf and hard of hearing people across the UK, including members from all the organisations involved in the coalition. The results showed:

22% of people received the wrong form of communication support either "often" or "all the time" when accessing public services.
26% of people reported that no support was provided to enable them to access their public services.
Over half (55%) reported that no information was provided about the availability of communication support.

Read the ACE report November 2006 (PDF 502KB) (opens new browser window)

 

 

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