There is an assumption that if a business has a deaf attendee at an event or a meeting, they will need to call on a British Sign Language (BSL) interpreter.
But that isn’t often the case.
You may think how do I know that? And it’s because I’ve seen it first-hand several times as Head of VoiceBox where we provide media accessibility solutions.
More than 18 million adults in the UK are deaf, have hearing loss or tinnitus. That’s almost one in three.
Yet only around 150,000 UK residents use BSL.
Now, it is worth saying that not everyone with hearing loss or tinnitus won’t be able to hear at all. However, there is an overlap there where a significant amount of people won’t know BSL and require captions instead.
And that could be for a multitude of reasons. You may be a soldier returning from an operation where you’ve heard loud explosions and you’ve been deaf for a year. In that case, you’re not going to be fluent in sign.
(Note that being deaf is a spectrum, from partial, to fully, and to getting better or worse).
There can be other elements that play a part too. For example, there may be limited BSL education opportunities.
So, sometimes we have to educate clients about all of this. You can call it being woke, but these decisions about education and the like are often made by people who aren’t deaf so they just can’t resonate.
It’s not always fluent to our clients which is understandable as it may be new to many of them. But we are here to help provide the bigger picture that being deaf doesn’t always equal BSL as the solution.
It may be that live captions will work best as it’s a live event. Or, if during an event or training program a video or short film is shown, then open captions (ones that are burned into a video) are best.
And we’re not trying to be patronising, it’s just that the world we live in requires constant education and we’re always learning too.
We want to help and continue to be part of the solution to accessibility in the digital and media industry.
So, we are providing free accessibility consultations for businesses. The purpose of that isn’t just saying that we can provide services and to take your money.
It’s about educating the client so the next time they make a video; they consult us at storyboard stage to ensure accessibility isn’t an afterthought and it’s a genuine priority.
This is something that we’ve done for the Paralympics three times as part of the thousands of projects we have done for clients.
I suppose this brings us to why we are offering this free consultation.
As well as supporting businesses with knowledge as above, there is the European Accessibility Act (EAA) is just around the corner.
For those who don’t know, it’s a European Union (EU) directive that encourages and enforces products and services to be accessible to people with disabilities in the EU.
The act started to take effect in 2019, but businesses have to ensure all the accessibility measures are in place by 28 June 2025 – less than one month away.
It applies to businesses that trade in the EU and any business with 10 or more staff and a turnover of more than €2 million. It mainly concerns businesses in the private sector.
For example, if a company is headquartered outside the EU and doesn’t sell in the EU, then it doesn’t impact them. However, if they sell relevant goods or services within the EU, they have to comply.
We want to help as many businesses as possible meet the deadline and avoid the financial and reputational penalties that could hit them otherwise.
Therefore, they can understand which type of digital accessibility solutions they may need to call upon and why.
So, explore a free accessibility consultation today with VoiceBox.