Brian Black meets Agnes and John Carberry together with their children, Shanon Paula Linda and Karen, at a shopping mall in North Belfast. Agnes, a teacher at a school for deaf children, was born deaf and John lost his hearing at the age of five. All their children can hear perfectly and quoting Brian Black,’’are the ears of their world’’.
John and Agnes discuss the importance of Sign Language and their struggle to get the authorities to recognize it as an official means of communication. Having experienced how educational system often fails deaf people, John and Agnes explain how lack of Sign Language-trained teachers and poor communication often leads to disproportionate emphasis placed on speech. This hinders development of other areas such as language and often results in children leaving eaducation earlier and not obtaining higher qualifications. Both Agnes and John continued to work hard to break down the barriers between deaf and hearing people.
After years of campaigning by the deaf community, BSL and ISL were officially recognised as minority languages in Northern Ireland in March 2004 for about 4,500 Deaf sign language users of which 3,000 are BSL users, and 1,500 are ISL users.Unfortunately, in 2018 there is still no official legal status for BSL / ISL in Northern Ireland and therefore they have no statutory protections.