Do you have a funny voice? Using Auslan: Australian sign language, a minority group language other than English.

Sign language is not used exclusively by people who are deaf. This language is also very useful for people who are hearing and or voice impaired. Once a student is confident enough to use this language in public places, they are frequently surprised just how many people are familiar with both sign language symbols and finger spelling.

Auslan is officially recognized as the Deaf community’s language in Australia. As mentioned in previous articles, hearing people journeying through Auslan classes find the experience to be challenging, interesting, and loads of fun. All students in the current Deaf Services Queensland class in Cairns, Australia, have successfully completed level one introduction to Auslan. Our efforts to learn introductory level two in Auslan are progressing nicely and coming to a close with only three once weekly lessons remaining. We are encouraged to have voices ‘turned off’ during class and also during the coffee/tea break.

To date, weekly lessons have resulted in students accomplishing the following skills by signing in Auslan.

* How to make culturally appropriate introductions and gain another person’s attention.

* Hand shape: The point hand and Auslan language signing symbols associated with the point hand shape.

* Describing others: Individually using signing symbols with appropriate hand shapes describing features of a person to the class until the group correctly recognizes the person being described by the signer.

* Talking about family and occupations: Individually describing our own family group and personal occupational history to the class, receiving feed back to confirm the information given.

* Attributing qualities to others: Describing another person’s personal qualities; describing our own or someone else’s pet’s type, gender, personality and appearance; game playing in the style of charades using Auslan symbols to portray different personalities and desirable personal qualities for specific work roles.

If you are interested in learning Auslan or the official sign language in your country, find out where your nearest Deaf Services Office is and request information about language classes. Personally, sign language is a great support to me when my voice is very soft following treatment or vocal cords are spasming and others are unable to understand my speech. Sometimes, in busy or crowded areas, I choose to sign rather than attempt speech knowing others are unable to hear or understand me. If you do not yet know any formal sign language, using common sense gestures and facial expressions together with other body language soon gets your message across to others. If you suffer from spasmodic dysphonia I wish you well.

I hope this article is of interest to you. You are welcome to leave a comment or email me at s.j.bayliss@bigpond.com.au.

Sue Bayliss. Cairns, Australia.

Are you safe at home alone?

For those people who are deaf or with spasmodic dysphonia, have you wondered how you will manage to call for assistance in a time of crisis? What do we normally do when we find it difficult to speak on a telephone? How can we be sure we are able to act appropriately in a household emergency? Worrying thoughts now may be our ‘inner voice’ alerting us to the need for a protective behaviors personal safety plan in our home.

Teletypewriters or textphones commonly known as TTY telephones, or a computer with modem, are alternative communication systems. These systems allow people who are deaf or, who have a speech or hearing impairment, to have immediate access from their home telephone to police, fire or ambulance emergency services.

Speaking on a conventional home telephone is not possible if a person is either unable to hear or unable to speak. Spasmodic dysphonia occurs when vocal cords spasm during attempted speech. The spasms do not allow vocal cords to open and close in a normal pattern thus forming speech. Whilst deafness does not specifically prevent the flow of speech, it does affect speech and does not allow the person to hear normally. Either of these variables put a person in that situation at great risk of being unable to summon appropriate help when urgently required. Although people with severe speech and hearing impairment may have a range of behavioral strategies for communicating on the telephone, we basically rely on others in close vicinity to act on our behalf when unable to manage a telephone call ourselves.

Safety is compromised when a person finds themselves at home in a life threatening emergency or where time is crucial and they are unable to use a standard telephone. Dialing ‘000’ is of no advantage when the person needing emergency services is unable to communicate their need or receive instructions in response to their call.

Be an ‘actor’ not a ‘reactor’ when it comes to providing yourself with a protective behaviors personal safety plan for emergency situations requiring police, fire or ambulance assistance in your home. Act now in anticipation of providing access to safety by installing a TTY phone. TTY phones connect to an emergency call centre. In Australia the TTY emergency number is 106.

The Australian Communication Exchange (ACE) Australian National Relay Service (NRS) provide a fact sheet clearly displaying how to make a ‘106’ TTY call for emergency assistance. The information includes tips for clearly communicating what your needs are. There is provision for text to voice type and read calls, hearing carry over type and listen calls and, voice carry over speak and read calls. If you are deaf or have a hearing or speech impairment your action now will greatly reduce the risk of reacting inappropriately to a previously identified need for a suitable system of communication in your home during an emergency.

Sue Bayliss. Cairns, Australia.

No way mate! You are kidding me, right?

‘struth mate, how on God’s earth can people who are profoundly deaf, people who are hearing impaired, and people with severe speech impairment practice active listening skills in non-verbal conversation? You have got to be joking!

No! I am fair dinkum cobber. Nodding in response to what the other person is signing, or saying things like “uh huh,” “mm,” “really,” means the person the conversant is signing to, the listener, fulfills an important role in informing the other person that he or she is being understood. Clarifying with the original signer to ensure the message has been correctly understood takes the non-verbal language skills as above, that little bit further and is reflecting to the signer that they are understood.

This ‘active listening’ behavior displays the process of responding to the overall conversation. It is listening with your eyes, the symbolic interaction of communication through signs and interpretation, according to deaf language and cultural norms.

Maintaining eye contact is a strong cultural behavior of politeness and acknowledgment of what the other person is saying. Looking away or responding in a passive way by not reassuring the signer they are being heard will terminate the conversation and be considered socially unacceptable or very rude.

Active listening as explained above is sometimes called listening with the third ear, a holistic sense of perceptiveness. Becoming involved with a group of people signing is to experience living in a truly interactive environment. Signing is rich in symbolic meaning, feeling and expression. Indeed, a ‘living’ language.

There are useful links in the above article. I hope you find the articles on sign language, specifically Auslan, interesting. The Australian Deaf community do not consider themselves disabled but rather, acknowledge their minority Deaf language and culture with pride and celebrate annually in Australia during Deaf Week. The Deaf community are very much a part of multicultural Australia's social fabric. In addition to these links, check out the links on Cairns and Australia below.

Sue Bayliss. Cairns, Australia.

Would you like to learn sign language?

The best way to learn sign language as a second language is to jump right into using it! Scary? You bet it is!

As Australian sign language (Auslan) is not a written language, the symbols of communication exchange can not be jotted down and read. Certainly, learning any new language skills is easier with appropriate tuition from someone who understands the norms of the society using that language. Also important are the finer points of cultural etiquette. This is particularly so for any signed language.

The use of naughty words and embarrassing gaffs is just as common when learning signing as with any language. Child like though it may be, it seems those kinds of words or signs are easier to remember than the more formal use of language. This is why it is so important for the serious student to learn from a tutor or signer prepared to act as the model from whom the student learns the formations, expression, movement, appropriate position within body space, stress, duration, sequences of movement etc.

Moving from an auditory language to a visual language within a ‘visual world’ or visual environment can be a daunting experience for hearing people. By switching off voice when walking through the door to class, the student really does become more dependent on the visual medium.

All communication, verbal or nonverbal, is an exchange of symbols including expression and body stance. In verbal languages we tend to forget we are constantly applying strategies to successfully communicate our messages. We encode our thoughts to dialogue that is spoken by one person, received by the listener, ‘decoded’, then reply is encoded before transferring verbally back to the original sender. This strategy develops the ebb and flow of dialogue, attention and body movement, between people.

Learning communication exchange with nonverbal language requires strategies just as learning another verbal language does. Listeners in a conversation of signed language have very active roles. Tomorrow I will write about some helpful strategies for learning Auslan.

Until tomorrow, wherever you are, have a great day and maybe observe how others communicate around you and how you communicate with others. Leave a comment if you wish or email me. (s.j.bayliss@bigpond.com.au)

Sue Bayliss. Cairns, Australia.

Signing is such a beautifully expressive language.

(if the first link goes only to the home page, enter 'symbolic interaction' into the search tab)

Have you ever looked at writing in a language you do not understand? How do you make sense out of the symbols that make words, sentences etc.? How do you communicate with other people in a ‘signed’ language? One way of describing the entwining flow of communication between individuals and society, and also between individuals in society is to understand a little about symbolic interaction.

Symbolic interactionism can be described as studying the relationship between the self and society as a process of symbolic communications between people. A symbolic interactionist may say the sense of ‘self’ is achieved through language and communication. In this way words reflect symbols representing facts and thoughts as well as feelings.

When a person learns one set of symbols of communication from infancy within their culture and family of origin they are able to communicate comfortably with those around them. However, when a person moves into another culture they are then required to learn a whole set of different language communication symbols to be able to interact with others in that culture or society. People who are deaf or have difficulty with speech form a sub-culture within their community and culture of origin. These people live in a minority group within a society based upon an auditory language. At the same time, these people rely upon a signed or visual language used to communicate with eachother.

Sign language is not universally identical. Languages that are ‘signed’ are specific to their country of origin. An example is Auslan, the official Australian Sign Language. Auslan is different to American Sign Language and both are different to British Sign Language. Sign language between Australia and New Zealand is also different. There are however, some signs that are identical or similar between Auslan, New Zealand and British sign languages.

Auslan is not a signed interpretation of English. Auslan is a recognized minority group language in Australia and has many expressions of vocabulary and grammatical rules that are different from English. Signing is a visual language using non-verbal symbols of communication. Facial expression is just as essential in signing as hand signs and body positions. All these elements of a signed language reflect a specific culture of deaf people including a small percentage of speech impaired people.

Over the coming weeks I will write more articles about signing. Specifically, I will write about my journey of discovery into a different culture within our midst. I have included some links above if you are interested in learning a little more about living and communicating within this amazing culture.

You are welcome to email me (s.j.bayliss@bigpond.com.au) or leave a comment.

Sue Bayliss. Cairns, Australia.

There is more than one way to voice an opinion!

Having a funny voice and a twisted neck doesn’t mean I can’t enjoy settling into a great new year! The only problem has been limitation of speech and a big pain in the neck. However, that is all under control. Not only has botox therapy relieved the tight spasms of speech and the pains in my neck and shoulders, I have returned to sign language classes. I must admit, I do need to ‘reframe’ many of my signs or should I say gestures? Sheer frustration gets the better of me most of the time and my signing means something else altogether!

Returning to Auslan (Australian Sign Language) classes offers me significant hope of managing the frustration associated with difficult voice and a body that just does not go into the shape it is meant to. Like riding a bicycle, lots of signing skills came flooding back into my mind. The problem with that being my dreadful clumsiness and inability to coordinate my fingers and hands mean the signs I intend to make actually mean something else at most inconvenient times!

People suffering from Dystonia including spasmodic dysphonia will know exactly what I mean. In coming weeks I will write about my journey along a pathway of discovery as my son and I travel further into that wonderfully diverse world of language.

Before we get too far along the adventurous path of signing, I would like to tell you a little about symbolic interaction theory, otherwise recognized as the development of society through the limitless interaction between individuals. Tomorrow, I will write about symbolic interaction as a way of explaining communication. Until then, you may recall a favorite book or movie that has impressed you with examples of different kinds of communication.

For those reading buffs or even movie fans, Clan of the Cave Bear by Jean M. Auel is a good example of using communication very differently to how we commonly think of communication.

Leaving you with food for thought.

Sue Bayliss. Cairns, Australia.

Twisted. Living with cervical dystonia and spasmodic dysphonia.

Have you seen this film?

Twisted is a film by Laurel Chiten, produced by Blind Dog Films . This story is about people living with the neurological disorder, dystonia. The experience of being trapped inside your body and thinking about what will set you free is told in the words of people living with cervical dystonia (CD) and one woman, a radio presenter, living and working with spasmodic dysphonia (SD), a form of dystonia affecting vocal cords. Laurel Chiten, the filmmaker also tells a little about her own experiences of living with CD.

A film review by The Santa Fe New Mexican on the back of the DVD cover says, “… Twisted is a success. Not only because of the filmmakers personal connection to the topic but because of the film’s fascinating and complex cast of characters. Its funky enough to be an art-house flick and brimming with larger themes about how people set themselves free. Part joy, part despair, TWISTED also explores the wonders and limitations of medical breakthroughs.”

If you would like to read a little about the lives of the people featuring in star roles of Twisted, this link will take you to them.

This film reveals inspiring stories of courage, determination and willpower. There is something for everybody. It is suitable for personal collection, continuing professional education, and support group meetings. You can order the film on-line, wherever you live. Just follow the above link to Blind Dog Films.

Sue Bayliss. Cairns, Australia.

Spasmodic Dysphonia and telephone phobia!

This article discusses an excellent service in Australia for people who have a hearing and or speech impairment. Countries other than Australia may have similar services.

ACE refers to Australian Communication Exchange, connecting anyone with everyone. This service in Australia is a non-profit organization dedicated to empowering people who are deaf or have difficulty with hearing, speech or communication, to use the telephone. The service allows people with a hearing and or speech disability to telephone or to receive calls, anywhere. The service provides for local, interstate and overseas, telephone calls for either personal use or for business. Confidentiality is assured. Other people without hearing or speech disability use an ordinary telephone to take or return the calls.

Choices for people to utilize this telephone call service are as follows.

Type and read calls, also known as text to voice calls, allows a Relay Officer (RO) to become your ‘voice’. As you type your message/conversation on the keyboard of your phone, the RO reads your words to the other person. Listening to how the other person replies, the RO types their words back to you. You read the message on a small screen above the keyboard. Calling a person is easy. With this type of call you do not use your voice at all. You can make a call by phoning the National Relay Service (NRS), following the prompts on screen and type away.

Type and listen calls, also known as hearing carry over calls, are for people having difficulty with speech but have no problem with hearing. Whilst you type your words into your phone, the RO reads them to the person you are calling or hearing from. You listen to the other person as you would in any straight forward phone call. The only difference is, you type your side of the conversation.

Speak and read calls, also known as voice carry over calls, are for people who can not hear well but still prefer to use their own voice or a voice device. The relay officer types the other person’s conversation for you to read but then you use your voice to speak, knowing the other person is able to hear you. If you wish to telephone another person with the same disability as you have you can both use your voices but read as the RO types your words to each other. In this way you both do all the talking but the RO does all the typing for you as you read what the other person is saying.

Speak and listen calls, also known as speech to speech relay calls, are for people having difficulty speaking and or communicating but prefer to use their own voice or voice device to speak to the Relay Officer. This type of call is good for people who find others have difficulty understanding their speech on the telephone. The RO, trained and experienced in listening to people with speech impairments, is able to re-speak all or a part of your conversation to the other person if they have not understood you.

A TTY (teletypewriter) is a telephone with a small keyboard, allowing you to type a message. Keystrokes are converted into signals and transmitted via a telephone line. There are different styles of telephones, depending on your particular need.

To access a TTY telephone in Australia, you may contact the Telstra Disability Service. Your doctor or speech pathologist is able to sign the application form verifying your need for this type of service. Cost to the consumer is the same as any Telstra home telephone. You can access the National Relay Service site by clicking the link at the beginning of this article for plenty of information about the service. For people in countries other than Australia, contact your local telephone company or your disability services agency for information. However, by browsing through our Australian site you may have a more informed opinion on which type of TTY phone service you require before following it up in your own country.

I use my TTY telephone when my voice is very strained and effortful. I also use this phone following Botox treatment when my voice is very soft and breathy sounding. The phone can also be used as a regular telephone by anyone else in my home. This service is of great benefit to me, reducing that feeling of horror that goes with, 'Oh, dear God! I've actually got to use the telephone'.

I hope this information has been useful to you. Please, leave a comment if you would like to. I am happy to reply.

Sue Bayliss. Cairns, Australia.

Yes Ma'am. You would like, what was that again?

Signing. Oh dear. Got it wrong again! “Sorry, no good at this. No toilet. I like cup tea, please.” “Yes. OK. You deaf?” The aircraft steward signed. Memory recall into go, go, go girl, kind of action. Hmm. I managed good signing response using Auslan (Australian Sign Language)! “No, I am hearing. I have bad voice speech. I learn Auslan help me talk many people.” “You doing very good” came the response, whilst keeping direct eye contact and using great facial expressions when signing before he reverted back to speech communication. He then poured me a cup of tea, passing it to me with a beaming smile. Phew! What butterfly’s in the tummy feeling all of that was!

Although embarrassed, I also felt quite chuffed about being brave enough to venture into the world of Auslan to communicate in public. Then it dawned on me! The lovely young man not only understood me but immediately replied using Auslan! Many people now learn Auslan through their workplace staff training programs. There are also classes available to the general public through many TAFE colleges and Deaf Services in each Australian State. Other countries also have similar services.

For those of us living with the effects of Spasmodic Dysphonia, Auslan (or any formal sign language) is a great communication tool to keep in our communication skills tool kit. Officially recognized as a minority group language in Australia, many children in our schools choose to learn Auslan as a Language Other than English (LOTE).

My youngest son Darren aged 36 has a significant disability himself. However, he lives with me and is my carer. I have great respect for him. Frequently, he is my voice on the telephone. When we book travel tickets he is there with me to interpret when my voice does not allow me to say what I want. Last year he traveled with me through the UK, France, Italy and Japan. His support is so treasured by me. Darren has also learned some Auslan and can understand my signing very well before speaking on my behalf.

Both Darren and I continue our learning of Auslan by enrolling in more advanced classes run by Queensland Deaf Services in Cairns, Australia. Very useful resources we use frequently are as follows:
· http://www.auslan.org.au/ provides an excellent signbank showing the signing for words and also the finger spelling of words as well as number signs. A visual dictionary in action!
· http://www.deafservicesqld.org.au/ provides information about Deaf Services in Queensland, interpreter services, Auslan classes and links to other sites and services. A good place to start, gets you thinking about who and how to contact resource services nearer to you.
· http://www.deafnessresources.net.au/ provides many Books/Videos/CD-ROMs/DVDs and other fantastic resources available for purchase. Just great for speech impaired people too! Also, their email address is, dra@deafnessresources.net.au if you like to ask any questions.
· A great dictionary! Johnston, T. A.(Ed) 2005. Signs of Australia – A new dictionary of Auslan (Australian Sign Language). Sydney: Deafness Resources Australia. Available by ordering through all quality book stores or from the Deafness Resources site.

Have fun learning new ways to communicate for those times when your voice is not quite doing what you need it for! Let me know if you have any further suggestions by leaving a comment. You know, you are most welcome to do so. Sue Bayliss.