Introduction and the Festival of Ideas
May 6, 2008 Posted by Jeff in : Bristol, Innovation, e-society, Festival of Ideas, Guest Bloggers, Deaf Awareness , add a commentHi everyone and welcome to the first vlog in this series - Jeff McWhinney here - I am the MD of a social enterprise, Significan’t (Sign if I can’t), which assists all those of you out there who are manually challenged, unable to use sign language 
especially those providing a front line public service enabling them to engage with a qualified sign language interpreter through a video link within minutes and communicate with their deaf customers. Occasionally you may find my written English a bit ‘odd’ or strange - my first language is British Sign Language (BSL) and it has a different grammatical structure than that for English. It has been said that it is closer to the spoken languages native to India. That is why I am using a vlog (video blog) as well as this written transcript.
In this vlog I will be covering issues that deaf people face everyday in the hope that this group of people are better understood and therefore catered for as this week is the national Deaf Awareness Week. I will also cover innovation and all the latest with regard to the positive human impact that innovation has achieved.
Today, lets go to the Festival of Ideas event organised by Innovation Exchange (www.innovation-exchange.org) for social enterpreneurs (people like me!) facilitated by Innovation Exchange. A participant has uploaded a video clip which can be seen on YouTube and reproduced below:
Look at Me, Connecting Bristol welcomes Jeff McWhinney during Deaf Awareness Week 2008
May 3, 2008 Posted by Stephen Hilton in : Bristol, e-society, Technology, Guest Bloggers, Deaf Awareness , add a comment5th - 11th May 2008 is Deaf Awareness Week so we are delighted that Jeff McWhinney, a leading figure in the deaf community and a recognised digital innovator, has agreed to be Connecting Bristol’s Guest Blogger.
Jeff is the former Chief Executive of the British Deaf Association, Guardian Public Servant of the Year runner-up and now manages a video technology company called Significan’t, which he founded.
Significan’t uses real-time video conferencing to virtually link deaf staff and customers with British Sign language interpreters.
As Jeff explained in 2006, “There are about 275 registered BSL interpreters in the UK and around 70,000 BSL users. You just have to look at the numbers to realise that if a local authority or health trust sees a deaf person who is in urgent need and needs to communicate with them, they can’t do it straight away. There is usually a six-week wait to get a BSL interpreter to help sort out an urgent issue. What usually happens is that a deaf person will take their hearing child out of school to interpret for them if they have a crisis with their GP, for example. You can have the situation where a deaf person is being told they have a terminal illness and their child is interpreting for them.”
During Deaf Awareness Week, organisations working with deaf people across the country are inviting everyone to ‘Look At Me’. The theme aims to improve understanding of the different types of deafness by highlighting the many different methods of communication used by deaf, deafened, deafblind and hard of hearing people, such as sign language and lipreading.
Jeff will be adding a BSL version of his posts to the blog. We look forward to Jeff’s thoughts on how video streaming and other digital channels can help make the world a more inclusive, efficient and fun place for everyone.
