Do you have deaf or hard of hearing employees within your organisation?
Do you or your employees have regular contact with customers, clients and colleagues who are deaf or hard of hearing?
Have you made sure that your working environment is deaf-friendly and made all of your stakeholders as comfortable as possible?
If the answer is no to all of the above, how certain are you that you have never interacted with anyone who has, what it is often called as “invisible disability”?
Here are some facts:
- According to Action On Hearing Loss charity, approximately 1 in 6 people (approximately 11 million people) in the UK have some kind of deafness
- Approximately 900,000 in the UK are severely or profoundly deaf
- By 2035, ‘Action On Hearing Loss’ estimate that there will be around 15.6 million people who are d/Deaf or hard of hearing in some way…and that’s 1 in 5 people.
How deaf aware is your own business?
What is deaf awareness?
The purpose of deaf awareness is to help you and your organisation to become more deaf aware by being better able to serve d/Deaf and hard of hearing people.
This could be anyone from your employees and colleagues, to your customers and suppliers.
So literally anyone who is involved in your business, however big or small that is.
I want to help you to challenge the attitudes, perceptions and expectations that you may have around deafness via a bespoke deaf awareness training.
Little things like not blocking your mouth, making sure you are in a well-lit room and even not shouting (yes, that’s right!) can make a big different when communicating with deaf people.
What do you get out of a deaf awareness workshop & training?
By the end of the training, participants will be able to:
- identify solutions within the organisation that can help to improve their interactions with deaf people.
- learn better communication skills and the different ways to respond to deaf
- have better understanding of the topic of deafness, Deaf culture and sign language
- improve your customer service experience, which will lead to an increase in retention and loyalty
- reduce the risks of any litigation via the Equality Act 2010 (UK) as you are able to comply with the “Reasonable Adjustments that is required
- improve the confidence and performance of your deaf employees due to a better working environment and improve retentions
- reduce the likelihood of any frustrations or embarrassments between any stakeholders
- certificate of completion to be given to each participant or organisation
Who can benefit from deaf awareness training?
This training workshop is for anyone (individuals, groups or organisations) who interacts with deaf people and would like to develop a deeper and better understanding on how to interact with them.
By “them”, it could be anything from your employees/colleagues, customers, clients, suppliers, freelancers…literally anyone who is considered to be your stakeholders in your business.
It’s not always obvious whether you have interacted with one or not (and speaking from my own experience, I was never vocal about it and kept quiet).
But it is always a good idea be aware of how you interact once if you are more deaf aware.
Some of the environments that deaf awareness training could be useful for include:
- Schools, colleges, universities and other educational institutions
- Office environments
- Hospitals, dental practices and other medical practices
- Airports and airplanes
- Customer-facing premises e.g. shops, restaurants
- Business events e.g. conferences, workshops, networking events
- Social events e.g. conference after-parties, family events, dinner outings
The training is appropriate for:
- individuals
- public sector organisations
- private sector or corporate organisations
- voluntary sector / charity organisations
Who will NOT benefit from deaf awareness?
- If you want to be conversationalist or fluent in sign language
- If you want the entire training to be done in sign language
- If you want a quick fix or a “one-size fit all” solution
- If you expect me to do all the work for you in your business after the training
- If you are not serious about becoming deaf aware
- If you are not in it for the long haul
- If you are primary purpose of doing this is to increase your revenue
What happens during a typical workshop?
Each workshop will be customised to suit each audience and your situation. But a typical workshop will include the following:
- What is deafness and why deaf awareness is important
- the different types and varieties of deafness
- Understanding the different perspectives of deafness to help you better understand how it affects individuals
- A brief history of deafness
- Understanding Deaf culture and sign language
- The purpose of lip-reading and tips to make it easy for others to understand you
- How to communicate effectively with deaf people
- Things you should not say or do to deaf people
- Learn from real-life experiences of how I lived through various scenarios
- Working with interpreters
- Different technologies that can be used to make content more accessible online and offline
- Q&A and brainstorming sessions
Why choose me (Ahmed Khalifa) from ‘Hear Me Out! [CC]’?
As someone who has lived with various deaf-related challenges through his my entire life, I will offer.
You can learn more about my deafness story here but having been through various experiences as a deaf person, I’d like to think that I have a good idea of experiencing those tricky environments.
Environments like:
- working in a cafe or restaurant
- eating in cafes/restaurants with a group of people
- working in traditional office environments
- travelling in airplanes and cars
- attending dozens of networking events and after-parties
- attending multiple classrooms and lecture rooms
And as a public speaker, I want to make sure that you and your fellow attendees come away with insightful, practical and holistic view of how you can make your own environment more deaf-friendly.
How much does it cost?
All trainings can be done in-house at your premise. Please note that as I am based in Edinburgh, travel and accommodation are not included within the prices below. Depending on where you are based, that will be added on top of the prices below:
- Half-Day (3 hours): from £275 + VAT
- Full-Day (6 hours): from £495 + VAT
Why is it “from”? Well this will depend on several factors:
- the number of attendees that is planned to be present
- the level of details and customisation required to make it as bespoke as possible
- the amount of time required to be put together your bespoke training
- whether travel and accommodation is required or not
Perhaps you’ve got a question about the price:
How to organise a bespoke training?
If you have any questions or you want to start the booking process, you can contact me via the contact page or email me at hello(at)hearmeoutcc.com.