I am profoundly deaf. I have hearing aids and I can lipread. This is still not enough in circumstances like noisy environments and at home too when I choose to have hearing breaks, which many deaf people will do.

I and many others like myself, refuse to pay for BSL courses because we feel we should easily be entitled to them. As well as this, the friends and family of deaf individuals also need to learn to communicate via BSL. I feel that the problem is that many people were never taught BSL growing up as it wasn’t well known. BSL has become a well-known language. Why should we have to pay for in classroom courses when we think we should be eligible already?