On February 8th, 2011, IDK featured in the health supplement of the Irish Times newspaper. The feedback was extremely positive: here is an extract from one email received last week.
Dear Caroline,
Sound Advice [IDK] is a wonderful site, very cheerful and informative. I noticed in your bio, you studied history at Trinity [College Dublin]. So did I! Like you, I had an offer at another university – Queens in Belfast, which had better support for deaf students. But I really wanted to go to Trinity and luckily got an interpreter and notetaker.
There’s no way I could have followed lectures without them – I’m amazed you got through without this support. However, it was still a struggle: [TCD] didn’t know how to book interpreters, so I had to lead them by the nose not knowing any of this stuff myself.
While I was in college, Trinity finally got a disability officer and things got much easier. As an explanation for his total lack of awareness, the senior tutor said when I started I was their first deaf student. Later, I discovered another deaf student studied occupational therapy a few years before me. Now, you …
Great website! Keep it up.
Personal accounts like this, show the importance of college and tertiary-level supports to deaf and hard-of-hearing students. Trinity College’s Deaf Support in Third-Level (DS3) project now advises students arranging tuition supports. Check the DS3 Facebook page for updates on the Summer School and other outreach.
