Deaf Awareness: A continuing success story

Some ten years ago, deaf persons in Guyana mainly faced a life in isolation, while persons without the disability remained essentially uniformed and unaware of their difficulties.

Today, from a modest office on Norton Street, Wortmanville in Georgetown, chairman for the Guyana Council of Organizations for Persons with Disabilities and director of the Support Group for Deaf Persons, Leon Walcott, has seen first-hand the progress over the years, as well as the remaining – and new – constraints regarding deaf awareness in Guyana.

Speaking with Guyana Times Sunday Magazine, Walcott says he is “very optimistic” with the progress that has been made for deaf awareness and education over the years, and is also optimistic that more will be made. What needs to be done now, he suggests, is to take this success to a higher level.

He mentions the work of Sabine McIntosh, president of the Deaf Association of Guyana, who runs the Deaf Special Needs School in Tuschen, East Bank Essequibo, as one example of the progress made and continuing to be made in the deaf community.

McIntosh, he says, is using culture to promote and encourage deaf awareness and education through cultural activities such as dance and drama. She has held successful shows, presented by the disabled, over the past three years.

Currently, though few sign language interpreters are available, they are often called upon at police stations or in the courts to lend support to deaf persons in terms of interpreting for them. This ensures deaf persons are provided with their right to adequate representation, regardless of the legal issue.

While there is still a need for more deaf persons to access jobs, more deaf persons are employed than before and are income earners.

The University of Guyana had also signalled its intention to cater for students with disabilities in its Disability Equality Policy plan; a goal Walcott is happy to lend support to.

In addition, Walcott notes the more sensitive attitude among schoolchildren as well as among the general population, for the disabled. They are some of the groups the organisation has targeted over the years to educate about deaf awareness.

“Things are being done, which is an improvement from…let’s say…10 years ago,” Walcott declares. He adds that since disabled organisations “don’t have to reinvent the wheel” the progress made in the 10 years has been quick, building on what others had already put down.

Constraints

Walcott notes too that while there has been progress in many areas, in some areas that progress has been limited.

He mentions for example that while deaf persons are being employed, promotions are less forthcoming. This he adds is usually as a result of their inability to communicate effectively with other staff because communication has to be done in sign language, and few or no other staff would have such an ability.

In addition, while there is often an initial demand to learn sign language, persons, he says, view it as a “hobby” and learn the foundation stage but go no further. Often this is because there are no financial gains or economic benefits from learning sign language. As such, sign language users who are proficient in sign language are relatively few.

Also, while more persons, including parents of deaf persons, have been exposed to deaf awareness programmes, many are still not significantly more aware to change their attitudes towards the deaf.

He cites this as an example of why awareness-raising activities need to continuous; something that he says is done, tragically, only in spurts. Funding for deaf awareness programmes may be provided for a few months then nothing for several years.

“Parents need continuous assurance,” he maintains, something that is not possible when there is a lack of funding and few resources for ongoing awareness activities.

“We need a lot of resources,” he states. “We need personnel, and we need money to train them.”

But there is also a caveat with trained personnel, and it is linked to what he calls the “export of Guyana: the brain drain.”

With a certificate proving training in special education fields, when these persons go to the Caribbean or western countries “…we’ve lost them…That is a fact…we have suffered from that,” he reveals, slowing shaking his head.

Walcott also feels there is still a great need for raising more awareness as a public service from the media, government and private sector.

He also reveals that due to a lack of funding, which usually comes from the local business community and individuals, The Support Group for Deaf Persons, of which he is its director, will not be organising its yearly Deaf Awareness Week of activities, held at the end of September.

However, the Guyana Deaf Mission Church, located near Vlissingen road, on Dhanraj Street, will have its usual rally and march, as well as a church service. The church, which is run by Mary and Lawrence Hallahan, conducts sign language classes as well as church services in sign language.

A bit discouraged with the lack of funding, the group this year decided, as they did in 2014, to focus instead on International Day for Persons with Disabilities, which is scheduled for year end and consists of a week of activities encompassing all forms of disabilities.

Stumbling block

For Walcott, the biggest stumbling block to more success for the deaf in Guyana is that there are too few persons who can communicate in sign language. If more people knew sign language “life would be much easier for deaf persons,” he states.

Persons who regularly interact with the public should be competent in sign language to assist the deaf. Deaf persons need to have effective communication with government and private office and business staff when they interact with them.

The police, nurses and the public service need to be more able to communicate with deaf persons without the need for the few sign language interpreters presently available.

Walcott feels that once these groups are involved there will be what he calls “a spin-off effect, or ripple effect”. If a friend of someone is a nurse, he suggests, and sees her communicating in sign language with a deaf person, there is the possibility that that person would be encouraged to also learn.

To avoid miscommunication and misunderstanding, police need to be sensitive to deaf persons and taught sign language to help when communicating legal matters to the deaf, Walcott believes.

Misunderstandings and frustration can result as neither can understand the other, which though resolved eventually, can traumatise a deaf individual.

Guyana statistics

According to ‘Sociolinguistic Profiles of Twenty-four Deaf Communities in the Americas’ by Elizabeth Parks and Holly Williams, (SIL 2011) there are reported to be some 4,000 (Cholmondeley 2010, citing the 2000 census) to 8,000 (Hallahan and Hallahan 2010, suggesting the number of deaf persons using sign language) deaf persons in Guyana.

Cholmondeley, they write, says that there was no sign language use in Guyana before 1980. Currently both Guyanese Sign Language (GSL) and American Sign Language (ASL) are being used here.

Both Tracey Cholmondeley and the Hallahans are active among the deaf community in Guyana.