Jeff McWhinney
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Jeff McWhinney is a leader in the UK deaf community.
He was born in 1960, into a Deaf family in Belfast, both his brother and sister are Deaf. His family did not escape the pain of The Troubles in Northern Ireland when loyalists killed his cousin because she married a Roman Catholic. However, his family who used Northern Ireland Sign Language (NISL) and English, has Irish Sign Language (ISL) friends and Jeff learned ISL on his fishing trips with his father’s friend Hugh Keenan. He says the result is he can communicate easily in American Sign Language (ASL), French Sign Language (LSF), ISL, and other sign languages.
He was educated at the Jordanstown School in Belfast, where there was a teacher who also taught his father. He then went to Mary Hare Grammar School for the Deaf in the 1970's.
After he left school, he returned in Belfast, and was frustrated by that Deaf clubs and organisations were not managed by deaf people. He started the Northern Ireland Workshop with the Deaf which invited speakers such as Paddy Ladd and George Montgomery to speak about Deaf liberation.
While seeking employment in Northern Ireland, he encountered discrimination due to his deafness. His big break in his career within charities for deaf people, came about in 1984 when he worked for Breakthrough (now DeafPlus), a charity working towards integration between deaf and hearing people.
He career progressed, becoming the first Secretary of the Euro Youth Deaf Council.
In 1995 he became Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the [1]British Deaf Association (BDA), one of the largest societies for deaf people in the UK. From this position, he was involved in gaining UK Government recognition of British Sign Language as an official language.
He also became the Director of the Greenwich Association of Disabled People. Jeff has established eleven Deaf Image campaign groups in London and a number of sign language interpretation services.
He left his BDA management post in September 2004 to start up a new video technology enterprise, as Managing Director of Significan't (UK) Ltd. This company was considered to the fastest growing social enterprise staffed entirely by sign language users. He introduced the videophone to the deaf community and established the SignVideo Contact Centre, a centre which provides instant access to sign language interpreting through video conferencing. With the Greater London Authority and London Connects he succeeded in securing a grant of £500,000 from the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister's e-innovations programme. The SignVideo partners are CISCO, Tandberg, Prime Business Solutions and Tiger Communications. With this quartlet from the leading technology companies the platform developed by the SignVideo Contact Centre enabled full access by videoconferencing through many different avenues from the legacy ISDN videophones to the latest in 3G video mobiles. The SignVideo Contact Centre, was shortlisted for the prestigious national e-Government Awards for 2005 (winners to be announced at end of January 2006) the first deaf or disabled enterprise to receive this recognition.
Jeff McWhinney have pushed the transition of the British Deaf Association from a Deaf organisation (with the 'Wheelchair Mentality') into a BSL organisation. In his September 2004 interview with SIGN MATTERS, he commented: "The word ‘Deaf’ has several different perceptions out there ranging from those deaf through old age to Deaf BSL users. Also there are hidden groups within the sign language community such as Children Of Deaf Adults (CODAs). Working for the sign language community means we can include all these people in our campaigns for language rights. A good quote I have used often express how I feel about this subject. ‘Hearing people love English and its richness however it is seen by the Deaf as a tool to achieve equality. But no-one realise that Deaf people love sign language and its richness in the same manner above!’ While the new vision is great, the real challenge for the new concept of Sign Language community is whether Deaf people are ready to accept that hearing sign language users belongs to this community. I led a group of Deaf youths in Finland back in 1987 and someone in the group asked our guide how many staff in the Finnish Association of the Deaf were Deaf. The guy started counting, then asked ‘why do you want to know?’ I thought this was fantastic, that it didn’t matter to him. British Deaf people have yet to arrive at this stage and I look forward to that!"
