Empowering Deaf Society's project engaged 244 under-registered and underrepresented Londoners, 86% of whom were D/deaf and disabled. As a result of the project:
- 100% participants surveyed said that they were more likely to register to vote
- 90% said they were more likely to vote at the next opportunity.
At one of their workshops, Empowering Deaf Society engaged a Deaf woman in her 40s who uses BSL. She had never voted in a UK election due to the language barrier, compounded by a lack of accessible information in BSL and a fear of making mistakes at the polling station.
At the workshop, she learned about voter registration, the voter ID requirements, and the voting process, through BSL interpretation. Project staff were able to support her to register to vote for the first time, and received her photo voter ID.
She provided the following testimony of her engagement with the project:
“I always thought voting wasn’t for people like me. Now I understand my rights. I felt proud and equal.” - Attendee of workshop
Testimonies from other project participants reinforce the importance of making democratic education accessible to Deaf Londoners:
“I had never been to Parliament before and didn’t know Deaf people could ask questions. Seeing Deaf people inside such a big place asking about health services made me feel seen. Now I want to learn more and speak up.” - Attendee of visit to Parliament
“I learned how to register for voting and about the voter ID rules. I didn’t know any of this before. They showed me step by step in BSL. Now I’ve helped my family register too.” - Attendee of civic confidence-building workshop
“Thanks to the support from Empowering Deaf Society, our local Deaf group attended the GLA [presentation on London's Democracy and UCL's presentation on white and] green paper consultation. We wouldn’t have known about it otherwise. We now plan to regularly join local consultations.” - Partner organisation representative