Member Voices: Visiting CBC’s The Current

Member Voices: Visiting CBC’s The Current

Below, FSA member Jamie Finley discusses a recent interview he gave to the CBC regarding challenges facing deaf workers in the Canadian post-secondary field.

By way of Linda Campbell of St. Mary’s University, a fellow Canadian deaf scientist/professor, I was connected to Amanda Grant, a producer of the CBC Radio’s the Current. From a pre-interview on background with Amanda, on Deaf accessibility in STEM, which led to being asked to go to the Vancouver studio.  Although we had some challenges booking an ASL interpreter or two due to the national shortage of interpreters, this worked out and I got to chat with Matt Galloway, the host of the Current.

The interview was undertaken with three deaf academics, myself and Linda along with Kathryn Woodcock of Toronto Metropolitan University.  The experiences we all have were/are notably similar, especially working with American Sign Language interpreters – despite that we each are from a post secondary organization in 3 different provinces.  This indicates common systematic barriers we experience in the academic spaces.  If curious how we can remove those barriers, I’d encourage starting by reading the transcript or listen to the episode online. Hope this will help further understand and consider how systematic changes can be done within our workplaces at BCIT.

Jamie.