By Lynn Swinburne, Senior Health Promotion Officer, National Screening Service
We’ve produced videos with Irish Sign Language (ISL) about our four screening programmes – BowelScreen, BreastCheck, CervicalCheck and Diabetic RetinaScreen.
This is part of our ongoing work to improve access to our screening programmes and to improve equity in screening. We want to make sure that people who use ISL have the information they need to make informed choices about taking part in screening.
ISL is the primary language of the Deaf community in Ireland. It is estimated that more than 5,000 people in the country use it as their first language. We recognise the need to make sure that our communications are inclusive and meet the needs of people using our services, including the Deaf community.
We worked with the Irish Deaf Society to produce the videos. They helped us to overcome the challenges in creating effective ISL materials about screening. This included making sure the content was clear, easy to understand and culturally suitable for the Deaf community.
Sophie Kennedy, ISL Translation Media Services Coordinator at the Irish Deaf Society said: "We are happy to work with the HSE National Screening Service to translate their information and content from English to ISL. It is important that Deaf people have access to information in their own language so that they can understand how to engage with the public services they need. It is not widely known that many Deaf people have low levels of English language literacy. As a result, content presented in English can be a barrier for Deaf people engaging with services. Online content translated to ISL is critical to ensure Deaf people have equal access and are not marginalised."
This work is also one of the steps we’ve taken to implement the recommendations of our recent disability needs assessment report and provide information about our screening programmes in different formats. This adds to the suite of accessible information we’ve developed including easy-to-read and plain English resources, and visual stories using photos and videos.
To learn more about our work to improve equity in screening visit hse.ie/equityinscreening.