This is because computer transcription software can be trained to the “respeaker”’s voice — this makes it cheaper and also introduces the homophone errors you’ll see if you watch the news.

For radio shows with a fixed set of presenters, there’s something technical that could be built I reckon. Much harder for live events of course.

but on the other hand, if communities could support their members in learning to acquire the skills themselves, then those members could become even more valuable members of their communities !

another organisation i’m involved always provided signing at our major events, but we gradually became aware that there was only one native bsl speaker in the audience, & more often than not the signers were signing to each other; we also realised that most of our needful community members were deaf*ened*, rather than deaf, who had never learned bsl anyway. we consulted with our bsl speaker & her response was that although she personally preferred the signer, she well understood that other people’s needs outweighed her personal preferences, & that with limited budgets it was a far better use of resources to provide palantype speech-to-text for the many for the whole event rather than signing for the one for part of the event.

it should be remembered that the disability discrimination act mandates organisations to make reasonable accommodation; i do think organisations – especially righteous ones – should try their best to go beyond making just ‘reasonable’ accommodation as a box ticking exercise & make proper efforts for genuine inclusiveness; but that said, i don’t think organisations should be prevented from carrying out work at all because their budget can’t stretch to making the event totally inclusive – creative solutions should be allowed to be applied which although may not satisfy everybody’s wishes perfectly do at least satisfy needs as a compromise solution.