Image: Jane Cordell (deaf) and Saif Ali (hearing) converse with support from lipspeaker Bridget Elliott. Photo by Rob Martin.

We deaf people are so inconvenient. We often can’t pick up what is going on in the world of sound. So we can easily make social faux pas. We lag behind in group conversations, forcing hearing people to waste time making themselves clear. And if hearing people cannot make themselves understood, we make them feel awkward and uncomfortable. And on top of all that, when we need support – especially human support in the form of interpreters, notetakers or lipspeakers – it’s expensive, so we are bankrupting the country. Wouldn’t it be easier and cheaper to keep us all at home, not working?

Ok, ok. You guessed. I was playing devil’s advocate there. But the other thing about us deaf people is we are very good at spotting what you hearing people are thinking and feeling. You show us in your micro-expressions – frowns, visible sighs and impatient gestures – what a nuisance we are. If we lack confidence, your behaviour will make us shrink into ourselves. Or if we are confident, an assertive response from us may make you feel uncomfortable and cause a wall of frost to rise between us.

This is deaf awareness week. The idea is that, as the name suggests, we all become more aware of deafness and D/deaf culture and communication. I became deaf in 1990. For the decades since, I have seen how the best route to raising awareness is for people to work alongside D/deaf colleagues. When D/deaf people have work among others, it becomes normal and natural to learn and understand how to improve your communication. You share and develop together.

Support appropriate for the job, not the person

To bring about an integrated, inclusive workplace, there does need to be appropriate support provided. This is dependent on the D/deaf person’s job role. As a new recruit in a publishing firm to work as a trainee editor, I mainly worked alone. I only needed support for larger meetings - a few hours a month. In a later incarnation as a diplomat, the intensity and unpredictability of communication, especially when in an overseas role, meant I needed full-time support. Now, as the leader of a social enterprise set up to be inclusive and supportive of widely diverse people, the requirement varies, depending on our clients and the type of work I am doing. Having had a job I had already been offered removed from me due to what the HR department believed (imagined?) my support costs would be (in Central Asia), I probably know better than most how it feels to ‘be expensive’. You feel guilty. You are ‘costing taxpayers money’. (Important to recall that you are one of those taxpayers yourself of course).

Access to work?

I have been grateful and appreciative of the Department of Work and Pensions’ Access to Work scheme for supporting me to do purposeful work, earn a living, be able to achieve positive outcomes for hundreds of people and, I think, to encourage other potentially excluded individuals to aspire, seek good work and progress. Access to Work is a much admired, vital scheme which benefits any disabled worker. I therefore find it sad that the system currently seems to be overwhelmed and, probably unintentionally, can have the opposite effect for which this grant system is intended. The admirable Access to Work collective set up by volunteers is gathering distressing data about how unreasonably long new in-work claimants are having to wait for a response to their applications and the sometimes heart-breaking and economically destructive impact this is having on thousands of workers and their families.

The National Audit Office reviewed Access to Work scheme in February this year (2026). Their report is striking, indicating an almost doubling of requirement for the scheme over 2 years. It also describes how the DWP has not put in place any measurement systems to gauge the impact of their scheme. I found this surprising. The lack of data to show the positive effect of the grant spending means that the budget can unfortunately be regarded as ‘pure cost’ or a ‘disability benefit’. It is not. This is an in-work grant to create equity for people with requirements related to their disability. It is an enabling fund to support the Government’s stated policy of getting as many people, including disabled people, into employment. There is a real risk of our lazy press reporting bundling the Access to Work scheme into a ‘benefits’ bill.

No awareness: how bad can it get?

Awareness is important. When its not there, the world of work can deliver quite punishing blows to D/deaf workers.

I recently heard a shocking story from a friend with hearing loss. In a previous job, they used to wear a badge to remind colleagues of the fact. The badge read ‘Bear with me - I am hard of hearing’. This person’s line manager indicated the badge and said, ‘Oh that is just your excuse for your stupidity’. How do you start to reply to such multi-layered prejudice?

When I worked abroad, I used a second language which I mastered through (very) hard work. I would speak and interact in the language daily to try to keep improving. In meetings held with local speakers I needed an interpreter who worked with my lipspeaker to relay in English what was being said in the local language. I then responded in that language. My line manager had not worked terribly hard on their language skills, and chose to hog the language interpreter booked for me to help make up for their own linguistic inadequacy. They then had the audacity to say at the end of that meeting, ‘This just goes to show that these systems you use, they have their limitations.’ A bit like the line manager, maybe?

It is hard to describe how demoralising, infuriating and depleting such behaviour is. You can probably imagine. If you witness such behaviour, I encourage you to call it out.

If you care…

If this blog has piqued your interest, have a look at my blog for Deaf awareness week in 2025. It gives some hints and tips about what you can do to engage with D/deaf people more effectively. It’s simple, free and enjoyable. Why not try some of them out?

And finally remember that Result provides coaching in British Sign Language (BSL) and by lipreading deaf coaches. Interested? Get in touch.

We are what we do and we love what we do.