In our association, each year means a great opportunity for us to do something for the hearing impaired people who turn to us for help, especially in getting over the obstacles they find in the world of working. In 2018 we tended to defeat the barriers meant by the lack of accessivle vocational training materials and communication issues.

But what do these barriers mean?

Since the lack of workforce is quite common in Hungary, the employers are currently looking for non-used workforce. The hearing impaired people might offer an ideal type of human resource for them. Most of them are phisically healthy, can work even under pressure, and their mobility is acceptable, but their communication skills and education is poor.

Decrease the lack of human resource and finding a solution to the problem that the hearing impaired people are still living on the support of the state without having a proper job, is a sustainable goal, which provides incredible opportunities to both sides.

We can compensate the hearing impaired’s status on the labour market if we give devices to the employer, wihch influents the barrier-free communication. With such a device, not just the real work, but we influence the success of vocational education in the same time. As long as the employers get to know the situation and the current problems of the hearing impaired employees and they can communicate to each other, a fruiting cooperation might build among them.

What is the aim exactly?

Our employability project in 2018. was inspired by some international programmes. Within one of the Erasmus Plus programs, we are making a sign language dictionary application in the HORECA sector. Our aim was to make videos which presents the most important words and expressions of 3 working fields, a restaurant, a hotel and a garden. Tourism and culinary is a flowering industry even in the smallest willages, so that the hearing impaired people, no matter where they live, can have a job without leaving their family and the pressure of travelling long hours every day.

The project had 3 main phases

  1. Interviews

We started doing our tasks with observatorial interviews. We asked opened and closed questions to the 3 times 20 experienced employees and the 3 times 40 hearing impaired participants about the working situations and the work phases. We recorded their answers with a dictaphone in order to influence working off them. We visited 4 times the 3×10 employers, and we made interviews 4 times with the 3X10 hearing impaired employees.

  1. Making the words list more precise

In the ending phase of the interviews we didn’t ask more questions but we asked the interviewees to rank and complete the 120-120 words we collected while monitoring. In this phase the colleagues of 30 workplaces ranked our words list of 360 items.

  1. Making videos

After that, we only had the task to make the signed and subscried video material of the 360 words. All ovcational materials we produced during the project are available on our website.

The result is for 3 target groups

  1. The hearing impaired in the active age

Visual impairment, mentally retardance, social psychological issues or disability can turn out in our target group suffering basically from deafness or hearing impairment.

We are trying to develop their strengthens and encourage them to do for themselves and to apply for a job by our videos. According to our hopes, the activities presented by our videos to dare trying out themselves in new working areas and to turn to the workplaces which are opened to employ them.

  1. The restaurants, hotels and gardens which are opened to employ a hearing impaired person

By our videos these workplaces have become capable to employ, and we also influent to sensitivise the co-workers. The 2 most important directions are the communicational and vocational development in which we are trying to help the employers to get over the first steps.

  1. The mayor society

The deaf children can’t  immitate their environment’s communication, so that the hearing language is unlearnable for them. If they are already adunts, they can’t understand the task given by their supervisors, because while lipreading, they can get only the 30% of the information. While signing, this average increases to be 40-50%, which is significant enough to learn some basic sign language expressions.

Caused by the lack of understanding, most of them leave their workplaces just after a couple of days, even though they get succeeded with the interview. The task of the mayor society is to support the communication and the understanding with any devices given, if they meet a deaf or a hard-of-hearing person.

Long-lasting aims

The aim of the project is to produce useful material for both the hearing and the hearing impaired society. Working out the intellectual outputs inspire to extend the aims to other working areas as well. Expecially those working areas should be worth working out, in which we get experienced during doing the house working or while being in a family, so that the hearing impaired person can count on his / her current knowledge, and (s)he can build up the new elements on this knowledge. Hopefully this will result a successful and long-lasting relationship with his / her workplace.