Weekly DEAFWIRE news recaps
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In March 2024, a caregiver of a Deaf patient from Tennessee, was taken into police custody after they had poured boiling water on their client, giving them second and third degree burns. The caregiver, Tina Vaughn, was charged with Aggravated Abuse of a Vulnerable Adult and Assault. Reports say that the Deaf client lives in a group home and has multiple other health needs. Vaughn, who had worked as a caregiver for 15 years, did not call 911 to ensure immediate medical attention, but instead waited until the next day to call the ambulance. She did, however, call her supervisor on the day of the incident.
Deaf tattoo artist, Naomi Dalby, has recently set up her own tattoo studio in Barton Upon Humber in England. Despite her success in setting up her business, for Naomi, this has been a 16 year long journey to get into the tattooing industry. She says that the lack of Deaf awareness and accessibility was a significant barrier for her in achieving her dream. In her studio, Lone Bee & Co., Naomi uses British Sign Language (BSL) and spoken English to communicate with her clients, though she has at times resorted to lip-reading when her hearing aid went flat.
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Swiss evangelicals have worked together with Wycliffe Bible Translators to launch a project to support the Christian Deaf community in Switzerland. The project was the creation of an online Swiss German Sign Language (DSGS) Bible dictionary. Regula Herrsche, who is Deaf and leads the project, advocated for the importance of having Christian vocabulary that is accessible for the Deaf community. Herrsche has worked on this project since 2013 when it first began. She explains that the project started to process a lot quickly in 2020 when Wycliffe Bible Translators got involved.
Kenya is gearing up to host the first-ever Africa Conference on Deafness (ACD) in 2024, aiming to unite stakeholders from across the continent within the Deaf empowerment community. The Kenya Society for Deaf Children (KSDC), in partnership with the State Department for Medical Services, will take the lead in organizing the conference. Harry Kimtai, the Principal Secretary of the department, stated that the conference will focus on tackling the obstacles encountered by Deaf children across Africa. “The conference seeks to take stock of the continent’s initiatives for empowering the Deaf child,” he said. The conference will address many issues with the main focus being on how the Deaf community can be empowered and their quality of life improved. In Africa, according to the World Health Organization (WHO), approximately 135 million individuals experience varying degrees of hearing impairment, often regarded as a silent disability.
The Government and Deputy Minister of Sports, Arts, and Culture, recently announced that the goal vision of 2023 was not inclusive of the Deaf community, and that, that community had been left behind. The government wants to ensure that this vision must be inclusive to be able to be sustainable. They reaffirmed that the Deaf and disabled community must be part of it. This vision includes access to Zimbabwean culture, way of life, story, and folklore that have been passed down generations, and are shared with Zimbabwean society. The Deputy Minister wishes to bridge the gap that excludes Deaf children and Deaf people. In the Deaf community, we have amazing talent from our Deaf community called “Ngano”, which is storytelling considered important to Deaf children so that they can learn and later learn to do it themselves. Ngano is typically done in Zimbabwean sign language, which includes facial expression and body language - important features of sign language. In regards to this, there was a sign language stories launch that was held at a local hotel in Harare.