UK Deaf Sport and Coronavirus

As with many organisations and charities, UK Deaf Sport (UKDS) has had to adapt and look at different ways to the organisation’s objectives around supporting and enabling opportunities for deaf people to keep active.  This update aims to share our experiences over Coronavirus lockdown, some 8 weeks at the time of writing.

Back in March and in response to COVID-19, Sport England launched #stayinworkout which saw a huge increase in online sports and physical activities being provided and signposted to across the sector, a significant alternative to the traditional face to face delivery of sports and physical activity.

In response UKDS approach was to set up the hashtag #deafstayinworkout as a way for deaf people to easily find accessible activities, often delivered by deaf trainers/instructors but also those by hearing people who either use BSL and/or captions.

This was the right approach to take since UKDS is not a primary delivery organisation but instead works with its member organisations (e.g. deaf football and deaf basketball) and other partners across the sport and physical activity sector to make sure deaf people are made aware of and provided equal and accessible opportunities.

We reached out to numerous individuals in the field and quickly agreed a number of activities to be delivered online via grants, and a further number to be promoted using social media especially with the hashtag.  We also set out to continually learn and develop with the trainers/instructors about their needs and wants to deliver optimally.

Challenges:

There have been a number of challenges identified in this work which includes the following.  (more…)