I’ve been thinking about what the word ‘inclusion’ means recently, mostly because I’ve always taken it for granted (much to my embarassment) that it means inclusion=equality. But I’ve been reading a book by Gina A. Oliva ‘Alone in the Mainstream: A deaf woman remembers public school’ which has really made me question what I thought of as ‘inclusion’.

She asserts that having a deaf child at a mainstream school (with support) should not be seen as ‘inclusion’ with the positive connotations this word has, but instead as ‘mainstreaming’ which is a word that seems more appropriate. Being deaf in the mainstream can be positive in some ways, but being cut off from other deaf people, not knowing that there are other people going through exactly the same thing, or being expected to be ‘oral’ despite BSL (British Sign Language) being your first language, is just something that I feel is unacceptable.

I feel that my experience is very possibly like that: although my school had a Hearing Impaired Unit where I got support from (note-taking), I did not get the support that I needed and constantly had to work twice as hard because I had to read up on things all the time. I didn’t feel “included”; I felt different, unusual, despite there being other deaf people at the same school (three in my year).

My sister and I both had similar experiences at this school: we are both very different but had similar needs – we needed to have a notetaker at all times yet we only got around 60% of the 100% support we should have had. Some classes, I had no support at all: imagine not knowing what the teacher was saying and the panic that ensued when the class started doing something and I had no idea what! I really feel that the only way that schools can provide deaf people with a good education is if they start tailoring support for individuals, if they start listening to what the deaf person is saying they need. A teacher of the deaf at the same school suggested that my sister start taking notes and being ‘more independent’. How could she have taken notes and lipread at the same time? It is virtually impossible.

She left school to do a BTEC at Chickenshed because she was so unhappy about the support she was(’nt) getting, among other reasons. I feel that my own education would have been so much more easier if I had had full time support. Or even if I was at a deaf school, like Mary Hare, which seems so much more inclusive and forward thinking (much like Gallaudet University in the US which advocates total communication). My sister was thinking of going there, and she went to visit, her descriptions sounded wonderful (in the assembly hall they had TVs where you could lipread the speaker, note-takers and also signers)!

I’m not really sure what the answer is. But I feel that in order for deaf people, like myself, to be able to be “included” there needs to be equal access, there needs to be the right kind of support or technology for each individual (I have long thought how wonderful it would be to have a kind of hand-held speech to text thing that means I could access anything…) and there needs to be deaf awareness.

No more ‘are you deaf or what?’ or ‘it doesn’t matter’ or ‘I’ll tell you later’. No more ‘deaf jokes’ or ignorance. BSL needs to be recognised as a complex language (it is a recognised language but is not seen as complex) and not as ’simple shapes’. The word ‘inclusion’ should mean exactly that – including people and really respecting difference, giving people the support they say they need or want. It shouldn’t mean imposing the dominant ideology of oralism on someone that really prefers BSL.

Being deaf shouldn’t mean having a ‘loss’. It should mean gaining a culture, gaining a shared experience, being visual (or appreciating the visual), gaining friends and gaining new experiences. It doesn’t mean you can’t do things that other people can’t. You can go to the theatre (with captioning), you can go to the cinema (with subtitles), you can even learn to drive (my sister passed her driving test on Monday!). It’s a whole new set of experiences and that needs to be recognised.

There needs to be the right provision and the technology *is* there – so why aren’t we seeing it? I am frequently let down by cinemas and malfunctioning subtitle equipment, lack of knowledge of how to interact with deaf people from people that should know better (over enunciating, shouting, signing if you can’t sign and so on), deaf jokes on television or just general amusement about deafness (stereotyping) and so on. It really does need to change, because deaf people are being let down by stupid mistakes and ignorance.