Film - Joel Checkley, 'Deafhood', 2015, Museums Australia (Victoria)

Brent Phillips

I’m Brent Phillips and I’m the Manager of Communications and Community Relations Department here at Vicdeaf.

[Deafhood] 

Brent Phillips

Vicdeaf’s the primary service provider for deaf and hard of hearing people in Victoria and we work with a range of organisations and stake holders including government, non-government organisations and the private sector to ensure we provide access and information and support for deaf and hard of hearing people. We also provide awareness training, and information to the mainstream community about our language and culture and community. 

Vanessa Ravlich

So my name is Vanessa Ravlich and I’m twenty-one years old. I’ve grown up deaf. I have two deaf sons and my fiancé is deaf. 

Brent Phillips

I’ve been deaf since birth. My parents are deaf, my brother’s deaf and my grandparents were deaf too, so I was born into the community by default and it just went from there. 

Anne Bremner

I’m Anne Bremner. I’m a deaf person. My parents were also deaf, but they did not use sign language. I went to a school for the deaf, which did not use sign language and after school I went straight to the deaf club to learn sign languages. It was a wonderful experience for me. 

[Language] 

Brent Phillips

Auslan is the acronym for Australian Sign Language – the language of the deaf community here in Australia. 

Vanessa Ravlich

Auslan is not a universal language, it’s only used in Australia. 

Brent Phillips

It has it’s own grammar, syntax, grammatical structure and it’s completely different to English and a lot of people assume Auslan is English on the hands. 

Anne Bremner

A lot of people think that signs around Australia are all the same, but there’s not, but they’re not, we have the northern and the southern dialect.

Vanessa Ravlich:

Some deaf people use Auslan and others prefer to speak or lip read, so really it depends on the person. 

Anne Bremner

In Tasmania for example, the word ‘cream’, they use this sign. Here in Melbourne that sign is ‘shit’. So there you go. 

Vanessa Ravlich

Deaf people, sometimes they’re quite blunt and they say ‘oh you’re really fat!’ you know, that’s, you can tell quite obviously what people are saying. 

Anne Bremner

If you look back in the olden days, if you like and I’m talking the 1800s, the early 1900s, most deaf people would use finger spelling the alphabet on their hands because they had such good English and everything would be spelt out on their fingers. 

[The Alphabet] 

Anne Bremner

And then with TV we had people from Italy coming to Australia, a lot of Greek people coming and they used so many gestures and deaf people saw that and felt ‘you know what we can start to sign and be more open’ because previously it was a hidden language. There was a stigma with using sign language. But once we had the Europeans here, with their, the way they gesticulate as well and after the war in the 1950s, we started to find ourselves being far more natural with our expression and there we are.

Brent Phillips

One of the main reasons why we produce the information in Auslan is not only for those who have literacy issues but it’s also important that we provide Auslan information, or content, for the deaf community, because they have the right to access information in their first language - so that is key. Regardless of people’s literacy levels, a lot of people still appreciate the opportunity to be able to view the information in their first language and that’s so important.  

[Culture] 

Brent Phillips

I think a lot of people have different perceptions about what ‘culturally deaf’ means, but for me as a deaf person I think to be ‘culturally deaf’ it means you’re a member of a community, you sign, you’re involved in the community activities, you’re involved in the community groups that take place, sporting events and having an innate understanding and a true belief and identity of what it means to be deaf and being proud about it too. 

Vanessa Ravlich

Because we don’t hear, we often rely on our intuition. We rely on our eyes as well, but we have Deafhood, which is what we describe as our intuition. 

Anne Bremner

If I’m, you know, holding a young baby and the baby is making all those babbling noises, hearing people will say ‘oh, can you hear that?’ ‘Oh no, I can feel it, I can feel through the baby you know that it is making sounds and..’ It throws them. They suddenly think ‘oh gosh, can you hear?’ but of course not, we can feel those sounds. 

Brent Phillips

A lot of traditions, um, that are well known within the deaf community. Things like the long goodbye and also people catching up within the context of the kitchen. 

Vanessa Ravlich

If you are in a deaf person’s house you will be able to tell straight away, for example, there’s lights signalling when the door bell rings or when the phone rings and it’s just so noisy. 

Anne Bremner

You know a deaf person would go over and see a doctor, a doctor was writing down the notes and the deaf person wants his attention and starts tapping on the table you know the doctor was thinking ‘Phwoar, that’s not usual behaviour’, but that’s how we get each other’s attention. 

Vanessa Ravlich

Like you saw in the Deaf Kitchen theatre production there were lots of things, like the lights and using the kitchen table and banging to get peoples attention and that kind of thing. 

[Culture] 

Brent Phillips

I think Vicdeaf contributes so much to the community through various programs and services and has over the last 130 years. 

Vanessa Ravlich

The deaf community is almost like one big family…We’re not blood so to speak but our heart is the same. We have the same experiences of being deaf. 

Brent Phillips

As somebody who works within the organisation, I see all of the work that we do and I just think ‘You know, wow, the commitment of the people and the staff here ensure that deaf people have the opportunity to achieve the best in their lives is something extraordinary’ that I extremely value within the organisation. 

Vanessa Ravlich

That’s why I think is important to have Vicdeaf and Deaf Victoria and other organisations providing advocacy and support to the deaf community. 

Anne Bremner

It just feels like our home. It’s my place, belonging to the community, it’s my world.

Film - Joel Checkley, 'In a Hearing World', 2015, Museums Australia (Victoria)

TRANSCRIPT

[In a Hearing World]

Brent Phillips

I think about ninety per cent of deaf people are born to hearing families which means that when they come into the world their parents are not aware of Auslan.

Vanessa Ravlich

They’re in shock, they don’t know what to do. They didn’t expect to have a deaf child. 

Brent Phillips

And then the parents decide to go down the medical model or path of trying to get them to speak and use Cochlear implants. 

Vanessa Ravlich

Sometimes they, the medical professional will disregard Auslan and actually not encourage people to use Auslan because they feel like it won’t help them. But the thing is with a cochlear implant, it will help you hear a bit better, but you’ll always be deaf, for example, when you take the cochlear implant off, you can’t hear anymore. 

[Education] 

Brent Phillips

Education is certainly a vital area for our community and still, you know it’s nowhere near what we’d like it to be and deaf children who attend school without interpreting support does occur, or if they have an interpreter, they’re more likely to be a communications support person. They’re not actually qualified or um, have enough skills and experience. 

Vanessa Ravlich

Some schools are amazing and are in the, in the area where the person lives and others, the quality is just dreadful. 

Brent Phillips

And so that means that the child at that age, it’s so critical they receive the most appropriate information education throughout their language development. It’s an important phase and they don’t actually receive the appropri, appropriate quality of support and communication. So later on down the track it means that issues arise in their life because of the education or lack of education that occurred earlier on. 

[Employment] 

I think what we need to communicate better is the benefits of employing deaf people within the workplace. We have a lot of skilled and qualified deaf people, but they face all these barriers in employment because people think it’s too expensive to employ a deaf person. 

Vanessa Ravlich

The employment sector is growing, you know, people looking for apprenticeships, for traineeships, but I think there’s, there’s not enough being done for deaf people. They’re not being included, in fact they’re being excluded. 

Brent Phillips

We do have government programs such as the Employment Assistance Fund that exists that provides funding for interpreting services, equipment and modifications, but the funding is only capped at $6,000 so perhaps within the first couple of months deaf people will use that, and the rest of the year the manager of the organisation has to cover the costs. 

Vanessa Ravlich

So the, the boss needs to determine or the employer needs to determine whether this meeting coming up is important for the deaf person there, because they have to ration how many meetings are interpreted. But, it’s important that the deaf person has access to all of these interactions with the company. 

Brent Phillips

Thinking about deaf people and their productivity, I mean, obviously we would say that we’re more productive than people who can hear and speak because they work in isolation and focus more on their work and their attention to detail is certainly outweighed by, by their disabilities, so can focus on what they can actually do. 

Vanessa Ravlich

There are some people who, you know, say ‘okay, alright, we’ll give it a go’ with deaf people and they realise how great they are as employees 

Brent Phillips

Working amongst a cohort of people who have hearing means that you miss out on the different levels of diversity. So person can bring in a lot of humour, new language, different ways of communication that would certainly benefit a lot of people and a lot of people could actually learn from us. 

[Disability] 

Brent Phillips

For a lot of reasons we do need to label, label ourselves as being disabled in order to receive funding from government or fire support services, but within the community we’ve never really see ourselves as being disabled it’s more when we attend the mainstream community that there are barriers that are put in place. Barriers to information or communication, whether you get on a plane or a train, if you’re going to the bank, there’s barriers we face around communication issues. But the question is whether we’re disabled or society is disabling us. 

Vanessa Ravlich

Deaf people need a lot of different things in terms of access compared to hearing people. 

Brent Phillips

We’re often the invisible disability if you like because you never know when you walk past a deaf person on the street unless you would try to talk to a person or the person actually raises their hands to sign to communicate. 

Vanessa Ravlich

So, really it doesn’t matter about how they’re labelled as deaf people, but more importantly the respect. For example, um, some people will say you’re hearing impaired and I always say ‘no I’m deaf’. I’m not hearing impaired. Hearing impaired is just such a, such a negative kind of slant on it. I’m deaf, I’m proud to be deaf.

Film - Joel Checkley, 'Hidden from Sight', 2015, Museums Australia (Victoria)

TRANSCRIPT 

[HIDDEN FROM SIGHT]

Maryanne Diamond

My name is Maryanne Diamond and I am the General Manager of Advocacy and Engagement at Vision Australia. 

Ramona Mandy

My name is Ramona Mandy and I work for Humanware. I’ve been vision impaired all my life. I was born with the eye condition called Aniridia, and I’ve lost my sight from birth very gradually. 

Andrew Follows

My name’s Andrew Follows and I’m a photographer. I’ve never had good eyesight, so I was born with low vision. Ah, it was primarily detected in my first year of schooling. 

[ACCESS] 

Ramona Mandy

The types of access that blind people need is – one, to the printed word and be that digital or hard copy print – and secondly access to the built environment. 

Maryanne Diamond

Access to the environment, you know, is about audible announcements on trams, trains and buses, so when we, you know, if we can find where the train stop is and get on the train, how do we know when to get off and it’s about standards and, and consistency 

Andrew Follows

I think most art galleries now are fully aware of accessibilities 

Maryanne Diamond

There’s a lot of things that makes being part of the community a lot more accessible 

Ramona Mandy

The clicking lights - what they call the audio tactile traffic lights. To know when to cross – it's fantastic. It’s better than the invention of sliced bread. 

Maryanne Diamond

So we move around physically in the environment in a different way.

Andrew Follows

I wouldn’t accept that I had bad eyes, so I tried to be as normal as possible, and that’s what I spent half my life doing until I just picked up the phone one day and said I think I need some help. So, they matched me up with Eamon and I wish I’d done it a lot earlier, because he’s given me the freedom and the independence that I’d always been craving for but couldn’t get it. So, you know I owe him big time. 

Maryanne Diamond

One of the bigger issues for persons who are blind is access to information in a format we can read in a timely way 

Ramona Mandy

The figure is that there’s about five per cent of published information only that’s accessible to blind people 

Maryanne Diamond

Information is power. I mean, information you use to make decisions, with information you can participate in education, employment and so on. 

Ramona Mandy

There is a misnomer that, well if you have a screen reader you can just rely on the screen talking to you, to access your information but it’s not true literacy­­­. So, when you have braille at your fingertips, you’ve got literacy. You can see how things are written, spelt, punctuated. You can’t get that from just listening to a talking computer. 

Maryanne Diamond

You know, blind people just want to do everything the same as what everyone else wants to do in life. You know, read books or magazines or whatever we choose. 

Ramona Mandy

There’s a lot of moves afoot to improve that, but at the moment we don’t have access to anywhere near as much publish material as sighted people do. 

[TECHNOLOGY] 

Maryanne Diamond

Technology has been major change in the lives of blind people of how we experience things 

Ramona Mandy

Often people’s first knowledge of adaptive technology is through their contact with Vision Australia. 

Maryanne Diamond

Vision Australia has, over recent years, held open days where we call a Texpo where we invite all technology people to come and showcase their wares and we showcase our services.  

Ramona Mandy

It gives people who are vision impaired a chance to get up close and personal with our technology. They can sit down and see if they can see the magnification, or listen to the voice, or ask us questions. 

Andrew Follows

How you use the technology and what technology you need to use – it’s an individual thing but I think overall it’s, it’s pretty awesome. I wish I had some of this technology when I was growing up. 

Ramona Mandy

It’s really important that people choose the device that best suits their needs and their capabilities and their budgets 

Andrew Follows

The only downfall with technology is, it’s so expensive

Maryanne Diamond

And so Vision Australia’s part of a consortium, a worldwide consortium to look into finding or developing a new refreshable braille device that is like, costs a few hundred dollars instead of many thousands of dollars. 

Andrew Follows

If they can work out how to cut the costs down and make it more accessible for people that’d be good. 

Maryanne Diamond

Because accessible, affordable are really, kind of go hand in hand. 

Ramona Mandy

Technology is very empowering, it, I guess, helps you to perform better and with more functionality in the workplace, at school, in leisure. 

Maryanne Diamond

What we want is mainstream devices to be accessible as well as special devices that are developed for blind people to be accessible. 

If I get a Word document from my manger on his PC and I use it on my BrailleNote, I’m still interacting seamlessly with him even though we’re using two different technologies. and that integration is empowering because the blind person has the right to be part of the regular mainstream world. 

[ADVOCACY] 

Maryanne Diamond

I think the concept of how you provide services, how you support, how you empower people with disabilities, in our case blind people, has changed over the years. 

Ramona Mandy

Teachers are now encouraging children to speak up for themselves a lot more, so empowering children with a vision impairment, that attitudinal shift from say a generation ago of speak up and advocate for your own needs rather than the blind person will be taken care of. 

Andrew Follows

The days of sheltered workshops with switchboard or low manual labour – I think those days are gone. I hope they have anyway. But, it’s still hard. I mean imagine you walk into a gallery with a guide dog and you say, ‘Hey, I’m a photographer I’d like you to exhibit my work’ I mean what would you think? 

Maryanne Diamond

In a way disability is a responsibility of all of us. 

Ramona Mandy

I think things become more accessible through people speaking up, a bit of the squeaky wheel syndrome. So, through advocacy of say organisations that represent the blind. 

Maryanne Diamond

One of the things we’re doing here at Vision Australia is developing a self-advocacy training because the best thing we can do is to empower people to be their own advocates. 

Andrew Follows

In my case, I’m a photographer first and I’m legally blind second. So, I want to be out there, I want to be known but in a positive way. 

Maryanne Diamond

You can do anything with the right supports and skills. 

Andrew Follows

It’s not, it’s not the ‘Give the blind man a go’ scenario, it’s ‘Oh shit, he’s a photographer and look how good he is’, you know. 

Ramona Mandy

So it’s all about opportunities and reaching your potential as a blind person. You should be able to enjoy the same rights and lifestyle choices that non-vision impaired people would make. 

Maryanne Diamond

We will continue to work with blind people, empowering blind people to participate in life, in any area of life they choose. 

Andrew Follows

I’m showing my disability in a positive way. I’m out there taking photographs, documenting what I absolutely am passionate about, which is Melbourne and I’ve got my best friend by my side and um, you know, to me I couldn’t have it any other way.

Film - Joel Checkley, 'In a Seeing World', 2015, Museums Australia (Victoria)

TRANSCRIPT 

[IN A SEEING WORLD] 

Maryanne Diamond

Vision Australia provides services to people who are blind or who have low vision, of all ages. So starting from early childhood programs. So when a family has a child, you know, born blind or loses their sight at a young age, we have our services that we support the family and the child. And at one stage I did some work with parents of children who were blind and there was an automatic thing to assume by the parents that my child won’t be able to do anything much because they’re blind 

[EDUCATION] 

Maryanne Diamond

People still seem to encounter disadvantage and discrimination in access to education. 

Andrew Follows

Being blind it’s, it can shut a lotta, lotta doors and its hard to break through. 

Maryanne Diamond

Whether that be getting access to their materials in a format they can read, to do their course, or whether it be denial of certain subjects or courses because their blind and it’s considered by some that they can’t do it for the sheer fact their blind, rather than their ability. 

Andrew Follows

Being a legally blind photographer it’s just not heard of. So, okay let’s break the mould. . You know, with me I’m sort of, you know I’m fortunate, I’ve got life skills behind me and education in, and all that sort of stuff. But a lot of people don’t have that and they get left behind. 

Maryanne Diamond

People who are older who go blind, they’ve usually worked, they’ve had a career, they’ve you know lived life and now they’re having to readjust and rehabilitate into, you know, living a life of blindness. It’s very different to when you start young with a child and teach them skills from the beginning. 

Andrew Follows

One of the key things someone with low visual, someone with a disability but if you can get an education behind you, that will help. 

Maryanne Diamond

We need to make sure that even from the child’s parents, there’s an expectation of ‘you can do’ rather than what you can’t do. 

[EMPLOYMENT]

Andrew Follows

Unemployment for low vision or blind people is exceptionally hard. 

Ramona Mandy

You’re looking at about 75% of vision impaired people in Australia, and similar countries, are unemployed. 

Maryanne Diamond

And you have to kind of say why? Two real factors of which we came to the conclusion of – one is job readiness, like being ready, skilled, have access to the equipment that you need to do the job 

Andrew Follows

I mean anyone can use a computer now but trying to convince the employer that you can use a computer as good as a sighted person is really hard. 

Maryanne Diamond

And the other is the attitudes of employers. So that’s a lot about peoples’ attitude to what you can and can’t do ‘cause you’re a blind person and often assumptions that are myths, not true. 

Andrew Follows

People don't see past the dog, in my case or they don’t see past the white cane and what hazards that’s going to create in the office environment and all this sort of stuff. 

Ramona Mandy

Places like Vision Australia and other disability employment services are well aware of that and they try to market to prospective employers that a blind person can do that job. 

Andrew Follows

One of the good things that did happen when I was younger - Vision Australia had an employment section, to advocate you know, visually impaired or legally blind people into the employment. So I got some good jobs when I was younger, which was really good. 

Maryanne Diamond

You know, I have four children, one who is blind and what I find is that at school the children work at McDonalds, they work in, you know, everything to get a job and get some money. A child who’s blind has never had that same opportunity so we’ve got to get that happening in a young age to get them that same kind of, you know, work experience. 

Ramona Mandy

So, there’s a lot of attitudinal barriers that we need to breakdown in the employment arena, but things are improving. 

Maryanne Diamond

I think it will get better. I think we have laws that are in place, like the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, we have the Disability Discrimination Act in Australia, so there’s kind of lots of frameworks, legal frameworks to kind of ensure change happens, but change happens over time and people need to kind of embrace it and run with it.