Shane Keogh's story - Access to Historic Buildings
Channel: National Disability Authority
Date: 2012-06-01

This video was produced for the Access to Heritage Conference that took place on 30th May 2012 at the Law Society, Blackhall Place, Dublin 7. This conference was jointly hosted by the National Disability Authority and the Department of Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht. The conference presentations can be found on the NDA website at http://www.nda.ie. The other videos in this set can be found by searching for the tag accesstoheritageconference2012. The transcript for this video is available below.

Shane Keogh's story -- Access to Historic Buildings
My name is Shane Keogh, and I work with an organisation named DeafHear. I work as a Community Resource Officer in DeafHear. I myself, I'm deaf. I use lip-reading, I also use my voice and I also use sign language, ISL, to communicate.
I like to visit different historic buildings like Michael Collins Barracks, like the art gallery. Different historic sites like that interest me. I like seeing what they look like visually and I also like to find out more information about them.
There's three things really..Em.. You have to remember also that my ability is different to other deaf peoples' ability, you know some people might just communicate through sign only, so - Secondly as well, some facilities are great and very accessible, but the problem is, if there's a fire, and the building needs to be evacuated, how do deaf people become aware of it? There mightn't be any flashing lights to alert deaf people.. like Egress, is a facility where the staff on each floor, which is very important if there's a fire,  that all people can be alerted to leave on that particular floor, so it means if there's a deaf person there, that they are alerted to leave. Thirdly as well, another way that the service could be improved, say for example, if I was to go into a museum and there is a tour guide there presenting, there is a major communication barrier there because there's no interpreter, if a deaf person is attending that. So, I would say it would be great if the facility could provide an interpreter, in order to provide access for that deaf person. 
One thing to think about for people who work in facilities is the lighting and how bright it is. Deaf people might have an interpreter with them and they might need to be able to see that sign language, or maybe the tour guide might be speaking to a hard of hearing person who might need to be able to see to lip-read, so lighting is a consideration here. 
And also, another thing that's important is for video information to have sub-titles for deaf people.