There is no doubt that Poland has taken an important step in recent years towards the full inclusion of people with hearing impairment. It is certainly a milestone to adopt the Sign Language Act and other forms of communication, whose primary purpose is to provide an adequate level of support for people with hearing impairment. This is to help them overcome barriers in communication with public institutions, emergency services and healthcare institutions. This law is also the first widely accepted legal act in Poland that unambiguously highlights the right of deaf and hard of hearing people to communicate through freely chosen methods of non-verbal communication. At the same time, a new opening for the realisation of the rights of people with disabilities, including deaf people, is a change in the area of telecommunication law, resulting from new obligations on the providers of telephone services.
Despite various legal solutions, the social situation of people with hearing impairment should be assessed as still deeply unfavourable. The area which requires a great commitment of government, local governments and social partners is the education of the deaf and hard of hearing. This is especially the case for the introduction of the real possibility of education in Polish sign language, and learning Polish as a second language. In the discussion on the sign language law, the necessity of making changes both in the legislative nature and in the practice of the application of this law is eliminated, and the reasons for its low state of implementation are increasingly discussed.
Starting text messaging was the first step in the cooperation between Olsztyn Voivodeship Office and deaf associations. Dedicated to this purpose, the phone number was made available to registered deaf people. Alarm messages were sent to the Emergency Alert Centre in Olsztyn. It was agreed that the scope of the activity was the area of the entire Warmia and Mazury Voivodeship. The main objective of the adopted solution was to receive the messages as quickly as possible and to hand them over to the competent services. The content of the application is the decisive factor in determining which rescue services will be deployed. The solution was therefore perfect when the hazard situation was described in the content of the application in an understandable manner. Unfortunately, a very large number of deaf people cannot write in Polish. For someone who cannot hear from birth, Polish is a foreign language. Therefore, there is a need to create another tool. Tools that will be universal, understandable for both deaf people in need and those who have to pick it up, tools that will be very straightforward to use. That is how Deaf Help came into being – it was decided to turn writing into pictures. The principle of operation is simple: in the application, the images represent various types of hazards such as fire, accident or pain. This solution eliminated the need to write. To send a notification to the Emergency Alert Centre you will need to:
- start the application;
- indicate the hazard category e.g. fire;
- indicate the sub-category e.g. home;
- specify the event address:
- my place of residence;
- other place – address can be entered from the keyboard;
- send my GPS coordinates.
This formatted message is sent to the Rescue Notification Centre, which confirms receipt of the message and notifies the necessary emergency services. Learn more about the project here: www.uw.olsztyn.pl