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Project to host conference to improve safety in the work place through sign language

18/03/2021
Project to host conference to improve safety in the work place through sign language

The University of Wolverhampton is a partner in the project Signed Safety at Work (SSaW) that is hosting an online conference to demonstrate how to increase the safety of workers and support employment opportunities for deaf, hearing impaired and migrant workers through a system incorporating sign language.

SSaW is an Erasmus+ project, ran with six other partners in the UK, Italy, Austria, Spain and the Czech Republic, that has aimed to produce a vocabulary based on International Sign Language.

Around 200 essential health and safety phases have been identified to facilitate workplace communication between employees; whatever their hearing and language ability.

In an emergency, a quick visual communication can be vital in a noisy environment. Visual communications can be easily understood by all employees.

Being able to sign urgent messages makes it safer for employees with a range of challenges to work together, be that migrant employees, deaf employees, older employees and employees in noisy environments that require ear protectors.

Project Coordinator, Natasha George from the University of Wolverhampton, said: “The conference that we’re hosting on 23 March will explore the issues of workplace safety and workplace communication between hearing native speakers, deaf and hearing-impaired sign language users as well as migrant workers. 

“We also hope to offer some possible solutions with a demonstration and workshop of the free Signed Safety at Work product suite.”

There will be British Sign Language (BSL) to English, and vice versa, interpretation available throughout the conference.

Advance registration is required for the 23 March event that takes place between 2 pm and 4 pm. Sign-up here: tinyurl.com/ssaw-safetyevent

The event is seeking to bring together people from a range of disciplines including health and safety, public policy, management and business ownership, human resources and workers.

The SSaW’s multilingual glossary is available in British, Austrian and Italian national sign languages as well as International Sign Language.

For more information please contact the Corporate Communications Team.

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