My BSL learning journey

[SashaGreen]

I have always felt the need to do more to be able to enable others with disabilities to be able to be better understood and involved within society. Having extra time on my hands this last year forced em to fill up my days off work with productive things in order to keep myself focused. I asked for this course for a Christmas present and have been working my way through one lesson a week and trying to utilise the signs I have learned in my day to day life as a means to remember them. The other day I actually had an encounter with an older gentleman who was deaf and was able to briefly engage in sing language (conversation) with him and I could see from the change in his attitudes how pleased he was to engage with another person and it made me even more dedicated to finish this course and use BSL regularly. I am also studying events management at university and we have been taught the importance of making events as accessible to people of all walks of life in order to make the event more desirable and the option for people with disabilities to attend. I feel that learning BSL will enable me to communicate with the deaf and hard of hearing community better and help me professionally to communicate with these people in a time of need. I am really enjoying my learning journey so far and have found it to be a lot easier than I first though, but some things have been a challenge to learn.