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Orange background with a thin white border framing the page. In the top right corner is an outline of Australia with the words National Week of Deaf People on the West Australia side of the outline. In the middle at the top is the date 21 SEPT 2022. In the middle of this page is typed in capitalised letters: NATIONAL WEEK OF DEAF PEOPLE and at bottom is the subheading HEALTH FOR ALL. In the bottom right is the page number 1.Â
White background with a thin orange border. At the top is an image of houses encountering natural disasters – house on fire, a tsunami wave attacking another house and a house that looks wrecked from an earthquake.Â
Directly below is a brick wall with two firemen ready to attack it with axes and Halo, the green-blue paper plane with a smiley face, is ready to help them. There’s a woman in blue and a nurse white cap holding a checklist, watching them and ready to assist the impacted people.Â
On the bottom right is the page number 2.Â
White background with a thin orange border and at the top is a governmental building with Halo flying from there. On the bottom right is the page number 3.
Consider this: do you think access to health care and health-related information is a human right? If yes, why do Deaf people continually face barriers of access to health care and health related services? If you look closely at governmental systems, they are in desperate need of change, take responsibility to fix the system and ensure ALL citizens have access regardless of their status and that includes the Deaf community.
Health care is critical in this day and age, because of COVID-19, climate change related health issues and mental health issues. There’s just not enough resources being made for those with English as a second or third language, including CALD minority groups.
My suggestion to those who work in government and governmental organisations is this: consider how you can be a part of improving the system to provide equity in information access. What happens if one day you suddenly completely lose all of your hearing or go completely blind? How would you be able to access health care then? It’s worth being empathetic and imagining what it might be like.
