Businesses focus on better serving the deaf

“Don’t call us hearing-impaired nor ‘deaf and dumb’,” Marcelle Boxill and Lionel Smith signed emphatically.

“We prefer to be called deaf, it is simple, it doesn’t need any addition,” Boxill said, assisted by interpreter Paula Medford.

“And hearing-impaired is just a politically correct term,” Lionel Smith explained, “We carry the term ‘deaf’ with … pride; deaf or hard-of-hearing.”

“Calling us anything else … makes us feel less than what we are.”

These were some of the messages professionals and businesspeople from several local companies got from people in the deaf community during the recently held See the Invisible! Spreading Awareness, Education and Support for Deaf People workshop held at the CIBC FirstCaribbean’s Great House in Warrens, where they were exposed to some of the challenges faced by the deaf and hard of hearing as well as the methods that could be employed to better serve and support them.

Chief Interpretation Consultant at Signature Interpretations, Bonnie Leonce referring to the workshop’s title, told the audience at the opening session that the deaf were invisible because their disability could not be recognised by looking at them.

CIBC FirstCaribbean’s Managing Director, Barbados and the Eastern Caribbean, Donna Wellington said she particularly liked the challenge the title threw out, “because, sadly, persons with disabilities continue to be somewhat invisible to too many in our society”.

“Their ideas, skills, knowledge, abilities and unique ways of seeing, navigating and contributing to society are lost to so many who simply won’t see past their disabilities,” she said.

“Workshops like this one and other activities and efforts to fully educate, sensitise and empower us to engage with persons with disabilities on an equal level, are vital steps in the journey toward the full integration of persons with disabilities in our communities.”

Wellington outlined the bank’s attitude towards people in the disabled community. Regarding careers, she said it is “committed to providing employment opportunities for any individual we believe is best able to contribute to our success, and that definitely includes persons with disabilities.”

On customer service, she said that over the years, the bank had worked with the Barbados Council for the Disabled to provide sensitivity training, mainly for its frontline staff, to better enable them to serve its clients and customers who have disabilities with dignity and professionalism.

She added that the bank’s partnership with Leonce and Signature Interpretations to host the workshop was “another key milestone in the journey of inclusion”.

“Advances in technology have allowed us to develop a number of digital products and services such as our mobile banking app, which has enhanced the way the deaf and other persons with disabilities do their banking,” Wellington said. “However, this workshop will ultimately help us as businesses and service providers to better understand and communicate effectively with our clients who are deaf or hard-of-hearing leading to them having greater confidence in us and we being able to optimise our service to them.”

In response, Leonce noted how awareness had helped CIBC FirstCaribbean, particularly its Wildey branch, to improve its service to the deaf community.

Advocating for a change in attitudes which she said could not be legislated, Leonce said that through awareness, a culture of inclusion and equality would be created across Barbados. She suggested to the participants that each one of them had the opportunity to effect that change by being part of the change.
(PR/BT)