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rneqfywp]e/s elva Rfehts fu Iiformatwn JOSEPH COLLINS he London Deaf Video Project (LDVP) was established four years ago in 1985. At that time, the Greater London Council (GLq was running a campaign to inform ethnic minority groups about the welfare benefits to which they were entitled. Leaflets were published in minority languages such as Hindi, and there were posters and advertisements all over London from which hearing people could get full information. However, because the average reading age of a profoundly deaf person leaving school is eight and a half years-functionally illiterate-much of the printed information was not getting through to the London deaf community. Deaf people did not fully understand the written information and therefore were not claiming the benefits to which they were entitled from the Department of Health or other social service agencies. It occurred to the British Deaf Association (BDA) and Paddy Ladd, a deaf man with experience working in television, that the GLC should be translating English information about welfare benefits and other social services into British Sign Language (BSL) for the deaf community. The BDA and Ladd argued that if the GLC were translating information into minority languages in leaflet form, it should produce visual information in British Sign Language on video also. They recommended further that the GLC provide videotape recorders to London deaf clubs to make it possible for deaf people to view the tapes. Both Ladd and the BDA had some experience in the world of video, and their arguments convinced the GLC, which granted the money to set up the London Deaf Video Project in November, 1985. The LDVP team, which includes four people (three deaf and one hearing), arrived at work in 1985 to find a bare room. They needed to start from scratch, and many questions needed to be answered: How many videos should they make? How would they contact deaf people? Did the deaf clubs have video machines? The team arranged an open meeting, which was attended by twenty-four deaf people from fifteen London clubs. Together, they made a list of twenty-seven subjects on which they thought information should be made available in BSL on video. The team was pleased with the open meeting, but twenty-seven topics! They needed to prioritize them. They decided that AIDS was the most important subject to bring to the awareness of the deaf community. They produced fifty copies of this video. Within a few weeks they had run out of copies, so they produced another batch. The deaf community now had access to the same information about AIDS as the hearing world. Deaf People's Civil Rights to Information Unfortunately, in April, 1986, after the video project was in operation only a few months, the Greater London Council was abolished, and the project had to close down until further funding could be found. The London Boroughs Grants Unit agreed to fund the project, which reopened in June 1986, and continues to cover most of its costs. To date, the LDVP has produced videos on AIDS, smoking, the legal rights of gays and lesbians, starting a business, welfare benefits, solicitors, planning for retirement, fundraising, and the black deaf community. Excerpts from some of these videos have been shown on television. A support unit for deaf AIDS sufferers was set up as a result of the AIDS video. The videos have opened up areas of information that previously were inaccessible to deaf people. That is the history of the project, but what now? What are our plans for the future? Recently, the LDVP team has met with the representatives of public service providers such as the police, fire brigades, gas companies, electric companies, and insurance companies. Many of them provide informational videos for hearing people, but nothing that deaf people could understand. We have been adViSing them about adding BSL interpreters to their existing videos, which can be done at an approximate cost of£800 per video. If our negotiations with these public service providers are successful, the deaf community will gain access to a lot more information. The LDVP has also used deaf narrators to add BSL to a video without using an interpreter. We did this in our "Do It Yourself" youth video. Deaf people found the deaf narrator more fascinating than a hearing interpreter, and the narration was truer to the deaf culture than an interpreter's signing would have been. In advising public service providers about BSL videos, we find ourselves also...

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