Advocate wants campaign change as hearing impaired vaccine hesitant

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For the better part of this year, the Government has spent significant time and resources educating the public about the need for COVID-19 vaccination.

However, WeCare Deaf Support Network founder, Qushiba La Fleur, believes more visual messaging is required.

Her comments come as members of the hearing impaired community are said to be hesitant to be vaccinated and have not accessed various opportunities which have made the COVID-19 vaccines available to them.

The news comes as the chief executive officer of the Blind Welfare Association revealed that four members, including extempo champion Joseph Vautor La Placeliere known in the calypso world as Lingo, are COVID-positive. Kenneth Suratt also complained that members of the association are opposed to being vaccinated despite numerous attempts to have them inoculated.

But La Fleur believes the current campaigns leave gaps for the hearing impaired- the majority of whom she said are not convinced they need to take the jab.

“It’s not like the vaccines are inaccessible but the compelling information on why I should and the benefits for an individual- that information is not very compelling (for the hearing impaired),” she said.

She believed it’s not an issue isolated to Trinidad and Tobago. While there are sign language interpreters on most government-based communications, she said it’s not enough.

“That doesn’t really help deaf people all the time because they are visual learners and you have to have some explaining or showing the effects of what this is and I have not seen anything like that from no organisation,” she said.

La Fleur believes a more visual approach to the vaccination education campaign will benefit more than just the hearing impaired.

“This is not tailored messaging just for the deaf but for persons in general who are visual learners…some people will learn by seeing it, some people will learn from reading it, some people will learn from hearing it,” she said.

“Our messaging especially around vaccines should appeal to all aspects of learners. Not just you put a message out there, an ad that I should listen to, and it’s good enough. It should be appealing to all.”

She said the government needs to put in the extra effort to ensure the message reaches all quarters of the population.

“If you are trying to get an entire population vaccinated, your messaging should reach all aspects of your country or your citizenship. That includes if it’s two or 10 persons with a hearing loss, two or 10 persons who are blind, two or 10 persons with autism or any type of disability,” she said.

According to a 2018 situational analysis of persons with disabilities in Trinidad and Tobago by the Commonwealth of Learning around 4.3 per cent of the population (59,008 people) live with disabilities in the country.