If you’re a deaf or hard of hearing person, an Irish Sign Language (ISL) user and a regular user of the train service, it can often be a struggle to keep yourself within the information loop if there are any unexpected platform changes or a service gets cancelled at short notice.
Granted, it’s not as bad as the days when all route information was piped through loudspeakers that even many hearing people probably found comically incomprehensible at the best of times. These days, most stations will have at least a couple of real-time information screens with essential information or special announcements.
But of course, there’s nothing like talking to a human – especially a friendly face who can speak your native or preferred language. So if you’re struggling to align the route information on your phone with events on the platform, it must be joyous to have a member of staff approach you and say in ISL: “I see you signing. I can sign. Can I help you?”
Irish Rail has recently put six staff through an eight-week basic course in ISL with a specific focus on how to use the language to better communicate special announcements or journey changes with passengers who are deaf or hard of hearing.
Part of the organisation’s broader equality, diversity and inclusion strategy, the aim is to put up to 40 staff through the same course so that key routes on the network will have at least one member of staff able to provide critical information in ISL.
Naturally, an eight-week course won’t provide them with anything like the language fluency to have a friendly natter, but if you’re a regular on the Cork to Dublin route, the chances are you’ll meet Patrick O’Callaghan.
A relatively recent recruit to Irish Rail’s onboard customer service team, his parents are deaf and he grew up using ISL, so it’s no surprise to learn this Mallow native is fast becoming a key member of the unit that is helping to deliver this programme. In fact, Irish Rail probably doesn’t even need to log positive customer feedback in order to prove its value in customer service terms; just watch O’Callaghan when he approaches a group of deaf customers and starts signing. “They would be taken aback, yeah, because, I suppose, they don’t really expect it,” he said. “So I think it’s nice for them like when someone just says hello or how are you, something small. I think it makes a big difference.”
Watching O’Callaghan interact with deaf customers has inspired at least two of his colleagues from Mallow to be among the first to undertake the basic ISL course.
Of course, as a child of deaf parents, O’Callaghan will instinctively approach anyone he sees using ISL and introduce himself, but the company is hoping to organise a “train the trainer” programme to allow him to upskill and mentor some of the staff in the longer term as part of the initiative.
Although the project began before he joined, O’Callaghan has already spoken to colleagues who have done the course and whose feedback has been overwhelmingly positive. “They said they really enjoyed the course, but that they’d love to learn more,” he said. “They want to go to the next level, where they can actually have a conversation with deaf people.”
It also brings an appreciation of the language itself, he added. “It’s not just you reach a certain level and you’re grand. There’s obviously far, far more to go and, yeah, the road is endless.”
The Irish Rail basic ISL courses are being delivered by the Irish Deaf Society. The charity’s chief executive, John Sherwin, says the organisation has successfully delivered courses to Government departments, public service providers, county councils, local libraries, schools, large tech firms and community groups. “The eight-week basic course is considered as an entry-level taster to develop a basic awareness of the language, but is considered pre-beginner level in terms of learning the language and being on a path to fluency in an academic sense on the QQI framework,” said Sherwin.
The organisation usually recommends to clients that they start at QQI level three as a starting point and progress to level four, which most of them do, he said. These courses last between 15 and 20 weeks, involve formal assessments and generally provides a stronger foundation in the language. “It’s a much greater commitment,” says Sherwin.
The demand for ISL courses has accelerated in more recent years, according to Dr John Bosco Conama, director of the Centre for Deaf Studies at Trinity College Dublin. He cites the demand from more than 100 primary schools for classes in ISL as part of the Department of Education’s Languages Connect programme to encourage young children to learn different languages, as well as the work of National Council for the Curriculum Assessment, which recently published a report last May looking at frameworks for the teaching of ISL as a subject in mainstream secondary schools.
Conama acknowledges that the 2017 ISL Act that gave official recognition to the language has probably helped to stimulate demand for ISL courses, but warns that expectations need to be managed. “Not enough people realise that there needs to be more work on developing the supply of resources for teaching the language and catering for the demand.”
The Centre for Deaf Studies trains both interpreters and teachers of ISL, but Conama says that the pathway to teaching has always been seen as the poor relation to interpreting as a full-time career. “We need to find new ways to change that.”
He is positive that, with some extra funding and investment, more people could be enticed into teaching ISL as a full-time career rather than as a part-time occupation or a side hustle, which he says is how many perceive it at the moment.
One of those initiatives is a joint proposal from the Irish Deaf Society and TCD for an 18-month course as a new, more accessible pathway to ISL teaching alongside the existing four-year programme that is provided by TCD, but which has failed to attract enough new applicants over the last few years.
Sherwin hopes this initiative, if successful, will help to address the shortage of ISL teachers that he acknowledges has impacted his organisation’s ability to meet the high demand for classes.
Conama is hopeful that the clear demand for ISL education will encourage more to pursue opportunities to become teachers. “I think now is the time to seize the opportunity; we can’t sit back and wait for things to happen.”
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