The Scottish Government

Literacies and disability

New legislation relating to disability establishes changes that will impact on every provider of education. The Equality and Human Rights Commission forecasts a "seismic shift" in the way organisations deliver services.

The Commission's website contains a section on Disability, including a definition of disability and a specific section on disability in education.

The range of conditions that might be encompassed in the term 'disability' is very wide. The implications for learning are extremely varied, even within similar conditions. And the organisations that offer support and advice are similarly wide and varied.

Learning Connections seek to establish a dialogue with - and between - literacies providers, practitioners and learners. Contact John Leavey for more details.

Useful websites on disabilities

This group began in January 2007, initially to discuss the development of learning and teaching resources for deaf learners. Membership has always been fluid and informal and has included practitioners from Community Learning and Development and Adult Literacy and Numeracy; representatives of voluntary organisations, including Deaf Action, Royal National Institute for Deaf People and Deaf Connections; and independent consultants. From the initial focus on resources, the group looked at other issues such as building capacity and continuing professional development, the relative isolation of deaf literacies practitioners and the contribution that Community Learning and Development makes to linguistic access provision for Deaf adults in Scotland.

Projects

Resources

In response to a proposal from the group, Learning Connections provided a grant to supplement funding from CLAN Edinburgh, enabling some of the group to:

• explore what kinds of materials would be most useful to allow Deaf learners to become more confident in their uses of literacy
• explore with Deaf learners how to make assessment, planning and recording tools more accessible and useful to them.

See the report How can adult literacies resources be made accessible for profoundly deaf adults? (2008) for more details.

Training

Building Capacity: introductory training in delivering adult literacy and numeracy learning opportunities for deaf people

CLAN Edinburgh received a grant from Learning Connections to adapt and enhance with new materials the training Getting Started for tutors working with BSL Literacies learners, and to produce an electronic version now available on Adult Literacies Online.

This course ran as a pilot in Oct - Nov 2007 and has been adapted in the light of participants' and trainers' evaluations, as well the above action research project on resources with British Sign Language learners.

The course aims to encourage those experienced in working with adults to incorporate and integrate literacy into their current or future settings and to develop an awareness of the principles and practices of the current literacy model with a view to using it within their work.

Words In Hand, June 2008
This was the first national seminar focusing on Deaf adult learners to be held in Scotland. The aims for the event were:

• to share the results of recent work to develop training and teaching and learning resources for working with deaf adults
• to offer an opportunity for practitioners who work in this specialised area of adult literacies work to meet and share their experience and discuss issues,
  ? to take note of important issues and challenges for working in this area and consider ways of overcoming them

It was a very good example of partnership working organised by a small group of practitioners from Edinburgh and Fife, representatives from Deaf Action, Royal National Institute for Deaf People, and with organisational and financial support from City Literacy and Numeracy (CLAN Edinburgh) and Learning Connections.
The report is available online on Adult Literacies Online.

Following the conference, the group focused on a number of issues raised in the plenary session.

There was a clear demand for some form of continued networking with a preference for an email network.

Learning Connections has a Disabilities page on COPAL (Communities of Practice in Adult Literacies) which has a few postings but is not yet being actively used by practitioners in the field.

Linguistic Access

In March 2009 the group arranged a presentation by the Scottish government Equalities Unit on "The Long and Winding Road: a road map for BSL Linguistic Access". Following this, the group wrote to the Linguistic Access Working Group in order to have the work of CLD recognised and incorporated into the roadmap. They explained the contribution of CLD to the empowerment and development of BSL people, allowing them to grow in self confidence, seek and retain employment, retain health and wellbeing and continue to contribute to society as equal citizens to hearing counterparts. The letter emphasised the vital role played by CLD literacies in engaging and referring learners. Without this engagement and foundation learning, BSL people are less able to progress to Further Education and Higher Education.

Future of group

The group has achieved a great deal in 2½ years, though there is no immediate need for continuing meetings but there is a need to keep in touch.

The discussion after Words in Hand identified the desire for a network and this will be achieved through email and COPAL as appropriate. The advantage of COPAL is that it has a far wider potential reach than any email network. The ALN and CLD e-bulletins are also useful channels of communication.

These channels together could enable interested practitioners and managers to lead on information for deaf learners and to respond to issues that arise.