Richard Stacey
Richard Stacey who is profoundly deaf, has learnt to speak, lip read and sign, and last year successfully completed a teacher training course (PGCE) at Sheffield Hallam University.
Supported and encouraged by his late dad, Richard, was educated in a deaf school in Sheffield and after passing his 11-plus, at a boarding school for deaf pupils in the South of England. Having gained six O-levels, he returned to Sheffield to study computers.
Richard has worked as a wages clerk, and as a doorman. For many years, he also worked as a lorry driver, even though at first he was refused a provisional licence. This was because a new law had come into force which was interpreted by some as no longer permitting deaf people to drive articulated vehicles. Richard became the first person to drive one after the Act, but he had to win a court case first!
Richard teaches deaf awareness and training effective communication with deaf people (sometimes including sign language) to a wide range of audiences and professions. These have included medical students and practitioners, and in particular staff at hospitals. He has also spoken to a church congregation and taught sign language to primary school children.
He is very keen to promote the integration of deaf and hearing people and was very pleased to be able to help form the University of Sheffield Sign Language Society.
Richard says, “Deafness has given me a fighting spirit to achieve more things and to be a role-model to those who want to get on with anybody regardless of race, class culture, gender or any kind of mental or physical disability”.
With reference to learning, he says, “it has greatly enlarged my horizons. I try not to make my deafness an issue. I just feel I have the right to learn. What an interesting place the world is and what a lot of fascinating things there are to learn and to apply. It makes me excited about all the other things I can know and do.”