Deaf and Hard of Hearing

Library staff are trained to appreciate the needs of deaf and hard of hearing library users, and while there are very few staff who can use British Sign Language they will do their best to communicate by the most appropriate method.

Larger libraries are fitted with an induction loop at the counter or enquiry desk. Some libraries are equipped with minicom textphones, and there is also a general textphone number at Library Headquarters.

There is a special collection on deafness, located at Library Headquarters but accessible through any library in Cheshire East, where catalogues of the collection are also available. The collection includes British Sign Language learning materials in a variety of formats, open captioned videos (which need no special caption reader to access them) and a range of books on deafness issues. DVDs, which are available in most libraries, almost always have captions and again do not need a caption reader. Most of the videos available in the libraries have closed captions, which means that they do need a video caption reader. We have a few of these caption readers available for loan.