This week, 1-7 May is Deaf Awareness Week. To celebrate this important occasion, UK Deaf Sport is sharing some simple tips on how local clubs, groups, schools and other sports delivers can make their activities more accessible and deaf-friendly.
At UK Deaf Sport, we want every deaf person to be active and inspired by sport and physical activity. Having a deaf participant in your sport or activity session may mean you need to adapt the delivery of your session to support them effectively.
To help you to meet the communication needs of deaf participants, we’ve developed a few simple tips and guidance to remember when you’re delivering your next sport and activity session.
UK Deaf Sport top sports delivery tips:
- Talk slowly and directly to people’s faces. Don’t turn your back when giving out instructions. If they lip-read, make sure your lips are easy to see and try not to mumble.
- Use visual aids to help explain exercises and activities.
- It can help if drills and techniques are demonstrated first, so that deaf participants are visually aware of what you are asking them to do.
- Check for understanding – if they don’t understand, try re-phrasing the instruction/information before moving on.
- Before the session starts, encourage deaf participants to position themselves in the group that best supports their communication needs and makes them feel most comfortable.
In addition to our top tips and as part of Deaf Awareness Week, there are a number of other resources available which you may find useful:
- Action on Hearing Loss Deaf Awareness Week materials – includes communication and fingerspelling cards
- Deaf children and young people – NDCS Deaf Awareness information and resources
- Deaf inclusion
- Deaf Awareness Week
