Communication Skills for the Deaf and Functionally Diverse
Communication Skills for the Deaf and Functionally Diverse
ASU (Artistas Sordos Unidos) United Deaf Artists from Catalonia (Spain), have asked us to design a program on Social and Professional Communication skills specially designed to provide deaf people with tools to socialize and make their professional growth easier.
The interaction between the deaf community and the hearing community in most countries is determined by the approach each community has on each other and the bridges that can be built to bring both groups closer.
Even when we can hear and talk, our communication levels with Functionally Diverse groups ( blind, deaf, mute, etc) is very limited. When communication codes change and new languages appear social groups tend to separate instead of learning new codes to interact. As a majority, the hearing community does not really make the effort to establish links with non-hearing non-seeing members of society.
So minorities usually make this effort and develop a kind of bilingualism (lip reading + sign language) to be able to participate in societies not ready for the Functionally Diverse.
The program Algo Bueno has designed for ASU considers both sides: the understanding of hearing peoples codes and points of view, the limitations of hearing people to learn new codes and the enhancement of communication true visual and written codes and tools.
internet for example becomes a great place for professional and social development of non-hearing + hearing interaction since there we are strongly visual + text oriented.
This and more is being discussed and built at these workshops in Barcelona lectured by Daniela Violi a member of our Creative Talent Bank.
