Yearly Archive December 9, 2019

See-Hear Training – Edinburgh

Thanks to all participants who attended the first of a series of Sensory Impairment Awareness days organised by City of Edinburgh Council for the Social and Health Care Partnership.

The morning session on sight loss delivered by June Neil @RNIB which highlights how sight loss can affect individuals and how services can be adapted to assist independence.

This was followed with an afternoon session on deaf awareness & communication tactics with deaf and deafblind people delivered by our own Andy Irvine of COMMTACS.

South Yorkshire Passenger Transport Executive

We presented two learning & development sessions for members of staff at South Yorkshire Passenger Transport Executive (SYPTE) in Sheffield on behalf of Signature ‘Get Deaf Aware’ programme.

The first course focused on deaf awareness and communication tactics with deaf & deafblind people for staff members who deal with members of the public by phone as well as front-facing services.

The second was working with staff members who frequently dealt with members for the public and covered mainly communication skills with deaf & deafblind people.

Edinburgh Health and Social Care Health and Social Care Partnership

Looking forward to working on a full training programme with Health and Social Care Health and Social Care Partnership to deliver a series of Deaf Awareness & Communication Tactics courses throughout the area.


RNIB Scotland will be delivering the visual impairment elements – again, looking forward to the planning, preparation and delivery.

HMP Durham

Many thanks for the warm welcome from HMP Durham staff who attend the Get Deaf Aware/Intro to British Sign Language course.

Great day had by all – informative and fun thanks to their willingness to participate and learn.

Feedback of staff attending was really good and I personally feel we all gained a better understanding of how we interact ….

Please pass on a massive thank you to Andy for putting up with us we are not the brightest bunch!

Deaf & BSL Awareness at AiB

Practical workshop session – learning into practice

Staff at AiB (Accountancy in Bankruptcy – Scottish Government) underwent Deaf Awareness & Communication along with an Introduction to BSL at their head office in Kilwinning.

Fabulous and positive feedback received for this course which was ran in collaboration with deafscotland.

Revenue Scotland become Deaf & BSL Aware

Revenue Scotland is responsible for the management and collection of Scotland’s devolved taxes. They have recently published their BSL Plan and within this, actions were to be taken to have staff trained in Deaf & Deafblind awareness, Communication Tactics with Deaf & Deafblind People and BSL awareness.

Participants actively taking part in a BSL exercise.

In addition to this face-to-face training, a number of staff will have access to our unique online eLearning units ‘AWARENESSbites’

Get Deaf Aware – Newcastle University

Many thanks to the staff of the Department of Maths, Statistics and Physics for their participation in training a training session specifically aimed at communication with people with cochlear implants.

The whole session was informative with the practical elements particularity so as well as being enjoyable.

Course run in collaboration with Signature Get Deaf Aware https://www.getdeafaware.org.uk/