大象传媒

Tip four. So I'm going to think about the environment around us. Obviously the world around us is very busy, isn't it? There's so much going on visually around us. So it's really important for you to be aware about deaf people hearing too much. Some deaf people can hear and some deaf people can't hear anything at all. But you know what it's like when you're trying to have a conversation if you're hearing and it's very, very distracting for you if there are loud noises going on around you. And it's the same for deaf people. When there are a lot of visuals around them, it can seem very noisy and can be exhausting. So for example, I can't hear anything at all, but if there's too much to see in the background behind you, when I'm trying to lip read you or you're trying to talk to me, it's so exhausting and distracting. It's the equivalent of noise. But for us in the pub, if a load of deaf people meet up in the pub, it's fantastic. We're signing away. It could be a really noisy environment and we don't care because we're all signing. But if you think about yourself in a noisy pub trying to talk with your mates, think about how exhausting that is. And that's what it's like for us - if there's too much stuff around you in the environment, or if it's not a clear background behind you. And we just love to relax with our home friends or people that can sign and just relax and sign away. It's so important for us to be able to have that relaxing time with our friends. But it's thinking about your environment and what's around you and what's distracting. So for example, thinking about being on a road, you know, you can have blind spots on a road? We can't hear the traffic coming. We have to be really attentive and work really, really hard to make sure that we can stay safe. It's not that you need to help deaf people. We're perfectly capable of doing it, but it's just being aware, because we just can get very, very exhausted and overloaded with all the visuals around us. So just think about how we can make the environment more deaf-friendly. If you come to the Deaf Academy, come and visit the Deaf Academy, you can see how it's a much more deaf-friendly environment visually.