April 15, 2025 • 17 mins
Sam catches up with Associate Professor Louisa Willoughby, senior lecturer in linguistics at Monash University, who is here to tell us about a series of workshops taking place later in the year for practitioners of Auslan to skill up in tactile Auslan for the deafblind community.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
S1 (00:04):
Louisa Willoughby is a senior lecturer in linguistics at Monash University.
Her work focuses on the intersecting areas of language and identity.
Language policy and service provision for speakers of minority languages,
particularly in health and education settings. She's here today to
(00:27):
talk to me about tactile Auslan and a series of
workshops and modules. Monash University will be running later this
year as part of a short course to upskill Auslan
interpreters to better service the deafblind community. Louisa, welcome to
(00:48):
Talking Vision. Thank you very much for your time today.
S2 (00:52):
Thanks, Sam.
S1 (00:54):
Now, today we're here to talk a little bit about
tactile Auslan, as well as some accredited training that's coming
up in the pipeline over the next little while. But
before we get into the details around the training, let's
jump in to the details around tactile Auslan itself. So
(01:17):
could you give us a bit of an overview of
how tactile Auslan works?
S2 (01:22):
Yeah, sure. So tactile Auslan is a form of sign
language used by people who are both deaf and blind,
where they're putting their hands on top of the person
who's signing and feeling what's being signed. But as you
can imagine, that's not entirely foolproof. Sign language is like
(01:46):
to use facial expressions a lot to tell us things,
so you might furrow your brow to show that you're
asking a question, or you might have a sort of
happy or sad facial expression to show something of the
emotional evaluation of what's going on. All of that stuff
gets lost when you're just feeling a sign. And also
(02:08):
sign languages like to use pointing a lot and direction
a lot. So I might put someone in a signing
space and then, you know, Bob is on my left
and Jill is on my right. And if I'm signing that,
I emailed Jill. I don't sign her name, I just
sign in that direction. And this whole kind of working out,
(02:30):
what's being pointed out is, of course, a daily challenge
for anyone who's blind. And so things like this have
to change when you're using a tactile form of Auslan,
rather than what I'll just call visual Auslan, but is
the sort of the normal deaf Auslan that people use.
S1 (02:50):
How have practitioners of tactile Auslan gone about bridging those
gaps in the past? How much sort of success has
there been in terms of adding those little pieces of
information in other ways and adapting the language in that way.
(03:11):
Has there been much success in that regard?
S2 (03:15):
Look, I think it's been very ad hoc. So most
people who are tactile signers started life as deaf people
with at least some vision and sort of learnt the
visual language and then through things like retinitis pigmentosa, have
lost their sight over the years and have sort of
moved to this tactile way of signing. And so for
(03:38):
both the deafblind people and the people supporting them, it's
often just been very ad hoc as a learning process
of what works. So there's not a there hasn't been
any official training in Australia about how to use tactile
Auslan with deafblind people. What's just tended to happen is
(04:00):
people have been either employed as support workers for deaf,
blind people and learnt to work with them or for
whatever reasons, have been an Auslan An interpreter who's like, yeah,
I'm going to give this a go. And then, you know,
might build up a relationship working with and interpreting for
a specific deafblind person and sort of coming up with
(04:23):
some strategies over the years, but really, really ad hoc
in terms of how people solve these problems.
S1 (04:32):
And following on from that, Louisa, I think there is
a really important topic around greater awareness of tactile Auslan.
So I'm interested to get your perspective around the importance
of raising awareness of a language like tactile Auslan and
(04:52):
enabling people around Australia and all the world in some respects,
to understand a fair bit more about it.
S2 (05:01):
Yeah. And look, I think it's one of those things
where awareness raising is really important to know that, yeah,
it is its own skill, but also so that people
realize that, oh, if I'm working with a deaf blind
person and I'm not doing this stuff, or I've got
(05:23):
an interpreter who's just an Auslan interpreter but doesn't know
tactile Auslan especially well that if the deaf blind person
then comes out of it a bit confused or says
the wrong thing or things like that, you know, we
so often judge people as just, oh, this person's a
bit slow, they're a bit stupid, they're not very competent.
(05:44):
All of these things because we assume that the communication
has been flawless. But of course, if the deaf blind
person is only getting half the message, they're going to
have all of these problems, they're going to have misunderstandings,
and they're either going to be taken seriously nor understand
(06:04):
important information that's being communicated to them. So I think
it's really important to build this recognition that, hey, you know,
deaf blind people have their own ways of signing and
if you do it correctly, suddenly they understand things and
they can do things that otherwise are just, you know,
(06:27):
not happening. Well.
S1 (06:29):
People listening out there may be thinking now and then, um,
you know, I would really like to know a bit
more about Auslan and then the jump on top of that,
getting into tactile Auslan, what would you say is the
biggest jump from people who have perhaps learned a spoken
(06:51):
language as a second or third language, and then that
jump between the spoken language to the sign language like
Auslan and then tactile Auslan. On top of that, what
are the biggest things for people to be aware of
as they jump in to, you know, learn the language
and interpret for people out there in the deaf blind community.
S2 (07:14):
Look, I think one of the things that comes up
a lot with sign languages is that people, for some reason,
tend to think that sign languages aren't real languages in
the same way that spoken languages are. So there are
lots of surveys that have been done with people who
are studying sign languages at university where, you know, the
(07:37):
majority of students will say something like, oh, yeah, you know,
sign languages are really just sort of English on the
hands or something like that, where, you know, of course
they're totally not. They have their own grammar, they have
their own word order, they have all their own different
ways of doing things. And there are yeah, there are
words in English that might have 2 or 3 different
(08:00):
signs that are the same thing, depending on exactly what
the meaning of the word is. And there are, of course,
other words in English where you might have 2 or
3 words in English that are just the one Auslan sign.
So often it's this whole getting over this mindset that, no,
they are actually real languages. But then also to getting
(08:23):
into the fact that you have to pay attention to
a whole new range of articulators. So yeah, we're used
to listening carefully to words and working out that, you know,
P and B are different, you know, different sounds or,
you know, S and Z are different sounds. But we're
(08:47):
not used to necessarily paying attention that someone's got their
finger extended, their index finger extended like they're pointing, and
now they've just tucked that finger a little. And that
that difference between a straight out point and a hooked
point might be meaningful. And we're also not necessarily used
(09:07):
to showing grammatical markers on our faces. So as sighted
people will often have expressions of surprise or happiness or
something like that. But we're not used to this idea
that we might always sort of furrow our brow for
a question, or always smile when we say the word happy,
(09:28):
or when we sign the word happy. So those sorts
of things are an adjustment. And then for the deafblind
side of things, I think people who are both sighted
and hearing often have this real sort of adjustment of
just what do I need to be doing to make
my signing clear? So if someone's trying to feel what
(09:51):
I'm signing, how I need to change all of that
to suddenly be a lot clearer when it's perfectly clear visually.
And what do I need to include? So just like
with audio description for blind people, for deaf blind people,
they sort of need a sense of who's in the room,
what's going on in the room? Are there people asking
(10:12):
them with hands up, asking questions, all of that kind
of stuff? And so just remembering to To include that
is important and challenging for many people.
S1 (10:22):
In amongst that is the need for an increased number
of tactile Auslan interpreters to provide such a service like
this and be able to enable people who are from
the deafblind community to communicate more openly with more people
and have that bridge between conversation partners when they're trying
(10:47):
to communicate important information to one another. So let's talk
a bit about that need for an increased number of interpreters.
S2 (10:57):
Absolutely. And so at the moment, if you want an
in-person interpreter or you normally need, of course, two interpreters
because they'll swap every ten minutes or so. It's important
with tactile signing. People need to swap very regularly because
the pressure of sort of having someone's hands on your
hands while you're signing, even if they're sort of super
(11:19):
light and super gentle, can cause shoulder injuries if you
do it for too long at a time. So to
get to tactile Auslan interpreters at an event in person,
we're often booking two months in advance at the moment.
Whereas I can rock up and say, hey, I want
a sign language interpreter online and I can normally get
(11:42):
one tomorrow. So yeah, it's a really big skill shortage
and shortage of people who can and will do this
work at the moment. So very important and as you say,
really important for inclusion as well because, you know, deaf
blind people are doubly isolated. You know, blind people can
(12:07):
access telephones and always have been able to and have
radio and various ways of connecting with each other. And
Braille deaf people have these days video phones. Deaf blind
people have often had a school experience that hasn't left
them with wonderful literacy. They've often become blind late in
life as well. So a number of them are not
(12:30):
really fluent Braille readers. They can't use a video phone
to sign with people. They can't use a normal phone
to call with people. So they're just at huge risk
of being really socially isolated.
S1 (12:45):
And this is where the accredited training comes in to
boost the numbers of tactile Auslan interpreters around Australia. So
let's get a bit of an overview of the accredited
training for people out there.
S2 (13:03):
Yeah. So this is something that's very, very new to Australia.
And that doesn't happen in a lot of parts of
the world either. So I think, you know, Norway and
Sweden are two of the only places currently where people
are really being routinely trained as deafblind interpreters. But what
(13:23):
we're planning on doing is we have a four part
module for the training. The first part is stuff that
a lot of people will have already done, and we'll
be able to get prior learning for. And that's around
some of these basic introduction to deafblindness units or courses
that are offered. So for example, Deafblind Victoria at the
(13:45):
moment offer a kind of introduction to Deafblindness day. So
for people who haven't already done that, we'll have some
pathways for them. But many of the people coming into
the course will have that basic knowledge about Deafblindness. Then
they'll come to us for a two day weekend workshop
(14:07):
of hands on training, of course, quite literally hands on,
where we're working through some of these strategies and with
a focus on tactile Auslan, but also looking at other
ways that deafblind people sign. So for folk with Usher's syndrome.
They'll often use what's sometimes called restricted visual frame signing
(14:28):
or close signing. So what, you're really trying to hold
the hands in a very tight envelope where they can
still see them. And so overview of the techniques to
use with all of this. Then people go out into
the world for a month or two. They do some
jobs working as deafblind interpreters and reflect on those. They
(14:49):
do some readings with us and some ethics based training
about some of the ethical issues in working with deafblind.
And then they come back to us for a final
weekend training, where we debrief around some of the stuff
they've been doing, problem solve, and talk a little bit
more about some of the working as a team of
(15:10):
tactile interpreters.
S1 (15:12):
Let's go into the details of how and where and
when the training sessions will be delivered. If you have
that information yet. I understand it's still in some ways
in the pipeline, and you might not have all the
details at hand as we speak, but how can people
(15:36):
keep in touch to find out more about the sessions,
if they'd like to take part and skill up in
such an important area?
S2 (15:47):
Yeah, excellent. So we're planning on running the weekend workshops
in July and September, and they will this year just
be in Melbourne. But we're talking about options to roll
out better nationally in the future. So in order to
come to these workshops, people do need to already hold
(16:09):
a naati qualification as either an Auslan interpreter, a provisional
Auslan interpreter or a native deaf interpreter. And if people
would like to be on the waiting list or it's
not so much a waiting list, but be added to
the list of people who are told about the formal
application process. They can do that just by emailing me. Louisa.
(16:34):
Louisa Willoughby w g b at Monash. And we'll make
sure that you're sent all the information you need to
register your interest when the time comes.
S1 (16:50):
Perfect. I've been speaking today with Associate Professor Louisa Willoughby,
senior lecturer at Monash University. Here to chat to me
today all about tactile Auslan and a short course featuring
a series of modules and workshops run through Monash University
(17:13):
on offer later this year for accredited Auslan interpreters to
skill up in tactile Auslan. Louisa, thank you so much
for your time today. Great to catch up with you.
S2 (17:27):
Thank you.
Louisa Willoughby is a senior lecturer in linguistics at Monash University.
Her work focuses on the intersecting areas of language and identity.
Language policy and service provision for speakers of minority languages,
particularly in health and education settings. She's here today to
(00:27):
talk to me about tactile Auslan and a series of
workshops and modules. Monash University will be running later this
year as part of a short course to upskill Auslan
interpreters to better service the deafblind community. Louisa, welcome to
(00:48):
Talking Vision. Thank you very much for your time today.
S2 (00:52):
Thanks, Sam.
S1 (00:54):
Now, today we're here to talk a little bit about
tactile Auslan, as well as some accredited training that's coming
up in the pipeline over the next little while. But
before we get into the details around the training, let's
jump in to the details around tactile Auslan itself. So
(01:17):
could you give us a bit of an overview of
how tactile Auslan works?
S2 (01:22):
Yeah, sure. So tactile Auslan is a form of sign
language used by people who are both deaf and blind,
where they're putting their hands on top of the person
who's signing and feeling what's being signed. But as you
can imagine, that's not entirely foolproof. Sign language is like
(01:46):
to use facial expressions a lot to tell us things,
so you might furrow your brow to show that you're
asking a question, or you might have a sort of
happy or sad facial expression to show something of the
emotional evaluation of what's going on. All of that stuff
gets lost when you're just feeling a sign. And also
(02:08):
sign languages like to use pointing a lot and direction
a lot. So I might put someone in a signing
space and then, you know, Bob is on my left
and Jill is on my right. And if I'm signing that,
I emailed Jill. I don't sign her name, I just
sign in that direction. And this whole kind of working out,
(02:30):
what's being pointed out is, of course, a daily challenge
for anyone who's blind. And so things like this have
to change when you're using a tactile form of Auslan,
rather than what I'll just call visual Auslan, but is
the sort of the normal deaf Auslan that people use.
S1 (02:50):
How have practitioners of tactile Auslan gone about bridging those
gaps in the past? How much sort of success has
there been in terms of adding those little pieces of
information in other ways and adapting the language in that way.
(03:11):
Has there been much success in that regard?
S2 (03:15):
Look, I think it's been very ad hoc. So most
people who are tactile signers started life as deaf people
with at least some vision and sort of learnt the
visual language and then through things like retinitis pigmentosa, have
lost their sight over the years and have sort of
moved to this tactile way of signing. And so for
(03:38):
both the deafblind people and the people supporting them, it's
often just been very ad hoc as a learning process
of what works. So there's not a there hasn't been
any official training in Australia about how to use tactile
Auslan with deafblind people. What's just tended to happen is
(04:00):
people have been either employed as support workers for deaf,
blind people and learnt to work with them or for
whatever reasons, have been an Auslan An interpreter who's like, yeah,
I'm going to give this a go. And then, you know,
might build up a relationship working with and interpreting for
a specific deafblind person and sort of coming up with
(04:23):
some strategies over the years, but really, really ad hoc
in terms of how people solve these problems.
S1 (04:32):
And following on from that, Louisa, I think there is
a really important topic around greater awareness of tactile Auslan.
So I'm interested to get your perspective around the importance
of raising awareness of a language like tactile Auslan and
(04:52):
enabling people around Australia and all the world in some respects,
to understand a fair bit more about it.
S2 (05:01):
Yeah. And look, I think it's one of those things
where awareness raising is really important to know that, yeah,
it is its own skill, but also so that people
realize that, oh, if I'm working with a deaf blind
person and I'm not doing this stuff, or I've got
(05:23):
an interpreter who's just an Auslan interpreter but doesn't know
tactile Auslan especially well that if the deaf blind person
then comes out of it a bit confused or says
the wrong thing or things like that, you know, we
so often judge people as just, oh, this person's a
bit slow, they're a bit stupid, they're not very competent.
(05:44):
All of these things because we assume that the communication
has been flawless. But of course, if the deaf blind
person is only getting half the message, they're going to
have all of these problems, they're going to have misunderstandings,
and they're either going to be taken seriously nor understand
(06:04):
important information that's being communicated to them. So I think
it's really important to build this recognition that, hey, you know,
deaf blind people have their own ways of signing and
if you do it correctly, suddenly they understand things and
they can do things that otherwise are just, you know,
(06:27):
not happening. Well.
S1 (06:29):
People listening out there may be thinking now and then, um,
you know, I would really like to know a bit
more about Auslan and then the jump on top of that,
getting into tactile Auslan, what would you say is the
biggest jump from people who have perhaps learned a spoken
(06:51):
language as a second or third language, and then that
jump between the spoken language to the sign language like
Auslan and then tactile Auslan. On top of that, what
are the biggest things for people to be aware of
as they jump in to, you know, learn the language
and interpret for people out there in the deaf blind community.
S2 (07:14):
Look, I think one of the things that comes up
a lot with sign languages is that people, for some reason,
tend to think that sign languages aren't real languages in
the same way that spoken languages are. So there are
lots of surveys that have been done with people who
are studying sign languages at university where, you know, the
(07:37):
majority of students will say something like, oh, yeah, you know,
sign languages are really just sort of English on the
hands or something like that, where, you know, of course
they're totally not. They have their own grammar, they have
their own word order, they have all their own different
ways of doing things. And there are yeah, there are
words in English that might have 2 or 3 different
(08:00):
signs that are the same thing, depending on exactly what
the meaning of the word is. And there are, of course,
other words in English where you might have 2 or
3 words in English that are just the one Auslan sign.
So often it's this whole getting over this mindset that, no,
they are actually real languages. But then also to getting
(08:23):
into the fact that you have to pay attention to
a whole new range of articulators. So yeah, we're used
to listening carefully to words and working out that, you know,
P and B are different, you know, different sounds or,
you know, S and Z are different sounds. But we're
(08:47):
not used to necessarily paying attention that someone's got their
finger extended, their index finger extended like they're pointing, and
now they've just tucked that finger a little. And that
that difference between a straight out point and a hooked
point might be meaningful. And we're also not necessarily used
(09:07):
to showing grammatical markers on our faces. So as sighted
people will often have expressions of surprise or happiness or
something like that. But we're not used to this idea
that we might always sort of furrow our brow for
a question, or always smile when we say the word happy,
(09:28):
or when we sign the word happy. So those sorts
of things are an adjustment. And then for the deafblind
side of things, I think people who are both sighted
and hearing often have this real sort of adjustment of
just what do I need to be doing to make
my signing clear? So if someone's trying to feel what
(09:51):
I'm signing, how I need to change all of that
to suddenly be a lot clearer when it's perfectly clear visually.
And what do I need to include? So just like
with audio description for blind people, for deaf blind people,
they sort of need a sense of who's in the room,
what's going on in the room? Are there people asking
(10:12):
them with hands up, asking questions, all of that kind
of stuff? And so just remembering to To include that
is important and challenging for many people.
S1 (10:22):
In amongst that is the need for an increased number
of tactile Auslan interpreters to provide such a service like
this and be able to enable people who are from
the deafblind community to communicate more openly with more people
and have that bridge between conversation partners when they're trying
(10:47):
to communicate important information to one another. So let's talk
a bit about that need for an increased number of interpreters.
S2 (10:57):
Absolutely. And so at the moment, if you want an
in-person interpreter or you normally need, of course, two interpreters
because they'll swap every ten minutes or so. It's important
with tactile signing. People need to swap very regularly because
the pressure of sort of having someone's hands on your
hands while you're signing, even if they're sort of super
(11:19):
light and super gentle, can cause shoulder injuries if you
do it for too long at a time. So to
get to tactile Auslan interpreters at an event in person,
we're often booking two months in advance at the moment.
Whereas I can rock up and say, hey, I want
a sign language interpreter online and I can normally get
(11:42):
one tomorrow. So yeah, it's a really big skill shortage
and shortage of people who can and will do this
work at the moment. So very important and as you say,
really important for inclusion as well because, you know, deaf
blind people are doubly isolated. You know, blind people can
(12:07):
access telephones and always have been able to and have
radio and various ways of connecting with each other. And
Braille deaf people have these days video phones. Deaf blind
people have often had a school experience that hasn't left
them with wonderful literacy. They've often become blind late in
life as well. So a number of them are not
(12:30):
really fluent Braille readers. They can't use a video phone
to sign with people. They can't use a normal phone
to call with people. So they're just at huge risk
of being really socially isolated.
S1 (12:45):
And this is where the accredited training comes in to
boost the numbers of tactile Auslan interpreters around Australia. So
let's get a bit of an overview of the accredited
training for people out there.
S2 (13:03):
Yeah. So this is something that's very, very new to Australia.
And that doesn't happen in a lot of parts of
the world either. So I think, you know, Norway and
Sweden are two of the only places currently where people
are really being routinely trained as deafblind interpreters. But what
(13:23):
we're planning on doing is we have a four part
module for the training. The first part is stuff that
a lot of people will have already done, and we'll
be able to get prior learning for. And that's around
some of these basic introduction to deafblindness units or courses
that are offered. So for example, Deafblind Victoria at the
(13:45):
moment offer a kind of introduction to Deafblindness day. So
for people who haven't already done that, we'll have some
pathways for them. But many of the people coming into
the course will have that basic knowledge about Deafblindness. Then
they'll come to us for a two day weekend workshop
(14:07):
of hands on training, of course, quite literally hands on,
where we're working through some of these strategies and with
a focus on tactile Auslan, but also looking at other
ways that deafblind people sign. So for folk with Usher's syndrome.
They'll often use what's sometimes called restricted visual frame signing
(14:28):
or close signing. So what, you're really trying to hold
the hands in a very tight envelope where they can
still see them. And so overview of the techniques to
use with all of this. Then people go out into
the world for a month or two. They do some
jobs working as deafblind interpreters and reflect on those. They
(14:49):
do some readings with us and some ethics based training
about some of the ethical issues in working with deafblind.
And then they come back to us for a final
weekend training, where we debrief around some of the stuff
they've been doing, problem solve, and talk a little bit
more about some of the working as a team of
(15:10):
tactile interpreters.
S1 (15:12):
Let's go into the details of how and where and
when the training sessions will be delivered. If you have
that information yet. I understand it's still in some ways
in the pipeline, and you might not have all the
details at hand as we speak, but how can people
(15:36):
keep in touch to find out more about the sessions,
if they'd like to take part and skill up in
such an important area?
S2 (15:47):
Yeah, excellent. So we're planning on running the weekend workshops
in July and September, and they will this year just
be in Melbourne. But we're talking about options to roll
out better nationally in the future. So in order to
come to these workshops, people do need to already hold
(16:09):
a naati qualification as either an Auslan interpreter, a provisional
Auslan interpreter or a native deaf interpreter. And if people
would like to be on the waiting list or it's
not so much a waiting list, but be added to
the list of people who are told about the formal
application process. They can do that just by emailing me. Louisa.
(16:34):
Louisa Willoughby w g b at Monash. And we'll make
sure that you're sent all the information you need to
register your interest when the time comes.
S1 (16:50):
Perfect. I've been speaking today with Associate Professor Louisa Willoughby,
senior lecturer at Monash University. Here to chat to me
today all about tactile Auslan and a short course featuring
a series of modules and workshops run through Monash University
(17:13):
on offer later this year for accredited Auslan interpreters to
skill up in tactile Auslan. Louisa, thank you so much
for your time today. Great to catch up with you.
S2 (17:27):
Thank you.
Popular Podcasts
Are You A Charlotte?
In 1997, actress Kristin Davis’ life was forever changed when she took on the role of Charlotte York in Sex and the City. As we watched Carrie, Samantha, Miranda and Charlotte navigate relationships in NYC, the show helped push once unacceptable conversation topics out of the shadows and altered the narrative around women and sex. We all saw ourselves in them as they searched for fulfillment in life, sex and friendships. Now, Kristin Davis wants to connect with you, the fans, and share untold stories and all the behind the scenes. Together, with Kristin and special guests, what will begin with Sex and the City will evolve into talks about themes that are still so relevant today. "Are you a Charlotte?" is much more than just rewatching this beloved show, it brings the past and the present together as we talk with heart, humor and of course some optimism.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.