9 ways life has changed for deaf people

See Hear is the world's longest-running television series for the deaf community and BBC's fifth oldest factual series.

The programme was first broadcast on 11 October 1981 and, to celebrate its 40th anniversary, the team look back at how life has changed for the Deaf over the past four decades.

When television was introduced in the UK in 1936, there were no subtitles for deaf people.

Until subtitles were introduced deaf people had to make up storylines

It wouldn't be until the 1980s when the first Teletext subtitles were introduced, and subtitles have only been more readily available over the past decade.

Up to then, some deaf people would watch TV and make up their character names and storylines.

In the UK, the BBC was the first broadcaster to include subtitles in 1979, and since 2010 BBC has provided a 100% broadcast captioning service across all seven of its main broadcast channels.

In addition, BBC iPlayer launched in 2008 as the first captioned Video-on-Demand service from a major broadcaster.

Since 2009, DeafZone has been working to support Deaf Festival-goers at Glastonbury Festival. It provides a team of British Sign Language (BSL) interpreters that cover music performances on the Pyramid and other stages.

A video of Tara St Clair (R) went viral after her interpretation of Stomzy's set at Glastonbury

In 2019 Tara St Clair's BSL interpretation of Stormzy's headline set at Glastonbury in 2019 went viral - her dextrous visualisation of the grime MC's rapid-fire lyrics took weeks to perfect.

As well as interpreting duties, the DeafZone Tent Crew also offer Deaf awareness information and BSL classes and perform BSL poetry throughout the Festival.

Wembley has now guaranteed BSL interpretation for every show, and guests who require interpreters no longer have to pre-book or attend on a specific night.

In the last 40 years, we've seen degrees and masters in deaf studies and sign language pave the way for sign language interpreters.

There are currently more than 1,600 language service professionals, including British Sign Language/English Interpreters and Translators, Lipspeakers and notetakers.

In 1994, Access to Work began. This government fund helps pay towards the equipment an individual needs at work, such as a sign language interpreter.

This has meant that deaf people now, at last, have the access they need in the workplace and, as a consequence, there are more and more deaf people in high flying jobs.

We have qualified doctors, vets, chief executives, journalists, Paralympians and actors - all are deaf and use sign language.

With films such as A Quiet Place, Sound of Metal, and CODA being box office hits, and actors like Rose Ayling-Ellis becoming the first deaf contestant on Strictly Come Dancing, representation on screen has never been so good for deaf people. And it all began with the BBC's pioneering programme See Hear.

See Hear celebrated its 40th anniversary in 2021

It is still a trailblazing series- both on and off camera- forty years on.

Camilla Arnold, See Hear Series Producer

The first series launched on 11 October 1981 on BBC One and has been campaigning and entertaining Deaf and hard-of-hearing people ever since. It featured the first deaf soap series, Switch, partnered with Newsnight to expose shocking abuse in a deaf school, and See Hear on Tour, the first travel programme presented in BSL.

See Hear's Camilla Arnold is BBC Studios first female Deaf series producer: "See Hear records milestones in deaf history, highlights the issues we face and above all, shines a light where other mainstream programmes very rarely venture."

The British Sign Language Broadcasting Trust was set up in 2008 to offer a way for commercial broadcasters to meet their regulatory requirements to provide sign language on their qualifying channels. They commission programmes made in BSL by Deaf people for Deaf people and have been the springboard for many deaf media professionals.

Technology nowadays means we can contact our friends directly via video call or text to make plans.

Up to the 1990s, deaf people would have to ask their parents or relatives to make calls for them, but we’ve seen the rapid evolution of technology since then.

We can now catch up with friends via FaceTime, make a dinner booking via a video relay interpreter, use instant chat for customer services and be alerted to noises such as doorbells, fire alarms and babies crying via our phones.

We can even follow speech through speech recognition apps and identify music playing via music recognition apps.

Hearing aids have come a long way since the vacuum tube contraptions of the 1800s, but it’s only within the last few decades that there’s been a huge transformation.

Newborn screening for deafness lead to questions

In 1995 the first digital hearing aids were invented- making for clearer sound for the users. Now some hearing aids are so advanced that they have integrated sensors like accelerometers and gyroscopes to track the wearer’s physical and mental health.

In 1993 we saw the first deaf-born UK child to have a cochlear implant. Instead of simply making sounds louder, like a conventional hearing aid would, the cochlear implant provides a sensation of hearing by directly stimulating the auditory nerve using electrical signals.

The introduction of newborn screening for deafness throughout the UK in March 2006 raised questions about how early babies should be implanted. Some research studies led some to advocate that the age of implantation should be before the age of two years.

In 2003, the book Understanding Deaf Culture: In Search of Deafhood, by Paddy Ladd, popularised the term 'deafhood', which Ladd had coined in 1990.

Deafhood is not seen as a finite state but as a process by which Deaf individuals come to actualise their Deaf identity

Paddy Ladd, Author

In the book, Ladd describes how, as one of the first deaf children in mainstream education, he was not taught to sign but forced to use his eyes and common sense to work out what was going on.

What Ladd became was pioneering. He initiated deaf television programming in Britain in the 1980s; worked as a presenter of BBC television's See Hear; created the world's first sign language pop video; and devised the first master's course in deaf culture.

Drawing on examples from philosophy, visual art and literature spanning the history of western civilisation, he argues that oralism is relatively recent and that sign language was once greatly respected - even revered - by deaf and hearing people.

A concept called 'deafhood'.

On Tuesday 18 March 2003, the UK Government formally recognised British Sign Language as a language in its own right. Yet despite this victory, BSL does not yet have any legal status, unlike the Welsh, Gaelic and Cornish languages. The British Deaf Association (BDA) has an ongoing campaign for a legal status of BSL to give deaf people legal protection. Because of the BDA’s campaign, in 2015, BSL (Scotland) Act was passed.

In June 2021, it was found that the UK Government breached the Equality Act 2010 when it failed to provide a British Sign Language (BSL) interpreter for its scientific briefings on the coronavirus. The judgment is a victory for Deaf campaigners, who have called on the Government to provide an in-person interpreter for its press conferences since March last year through the #WhereIsTheInterpreter campaign.

Work is ongoing to implement a GCSE in British Sign Language (BSL) following a campaign by a deaf schoolboy, Daniel Jillings.

In 2021 sign language interpreters were permitted in jury rooms in England and Wales, enabling most deaf people to participate in jury service for the first time.

It's an important part of citizenship that we are all equal and therefore have the right to participate in a jury

Prof. Jemina Napier, Researcher

The planned legal change amended strict rules that mandate only the 12 selected jury members can be present during private deliberations to allow for a British Sign Language interpreter where needed.

While there is no specific ban on deaf people serving on juries, many have previously been found ineligible to serve or left to rely on lip-reading and limited hearing during private jury discussions.

See Hear airs on the first Wednesday of every month at 8am. Watch the latest episode here.