dracos
commented
9 years ago I'm not sure we want to do video uploading/hosting ourselves when many such tools already exist. For example, you can upload videos to YouTube that are private and only accessible to the person with the link; someone could do that now and provide a link to the video in the message to their representative (given most representatives are contacted by email, this will then be a link they can follow). Perhaps we can suggest this in copy somewhere.
jacksonj04
I'm a profoundly deaf person who uses British Sign Language (BSL) to communicate - there are approx. 150,000 people like me living in the UK. The majority of us do not have equal access to participation in society, including corresponding with our MPs.
This is because English is not fully accessible to deaf people – it is a second language for many of us, and more than often it is not our preferred choice of language. This means we are not able to tell our MPs about the concerns we have. More and more decisions are being made in the parliament that affects the BSL community, and we have no voice.
Last year a conference called 'Bridging the Gap' was held at York St John University - it was discussed how to empower BSL users and enable us to to get involved with politics. Prof. Graham Turner from Heriot-Watt University mentioned your service, which made us wonder if it would be possible for you to add a facility for deaf constituents to record BSL video and send it to their MP via your website.
This would not only allow a channel for deaf BSL users to contact their MP, but also raise awareness of BSL by making MPs realise what kind of access deaf BSL users need: BSL interpreting.
MPs have an accessibility budget which means they are able to get the clip translated into English, and have their response translated into BSL as well, so that the deaf constituent is able to access the response.
The conference delegates agreed that this would be an amazing thing to do, and I volunteered to get in touch with yourselves.
How does SignToThem sound to you? Would it be technically possible to add a plugin on your site that allows people to record, or upload a BSL video to be sent with a note that explains communication in BSL? Are there any costs for this? Or do you have any alternative ideas?