20/07/2026
He graduated top of his class, passed the entrance exams for school, got his place. At his first anatomy lecture he sat in the front row, the best spot for reading lips. There was no interpreter. The dean's office cited budget constraints for the academic year and offered notes from classmates instead.
Notes don't capture the tone a professor uses to signal what's coming on the exam. They don't capture a question from the back of the room, answered on the fly, never written on the board. Six years of medical school become six years of gaps like this, quietly stacking up until they show up in exam results instead of knowledge.
The scale of this isn't marginal or local. In Ireland, deaf people are nearly ten times less likely to obtain a third-level qualification than hearing people, according to data cited by AHEAD, an organization supporting students with disabilities (based on CSO, Leeson 2012).
In the US, only 5% of deaf people enroll in postsecondary education, versus 9.9% of people, and 22% of deaf adults complete a bachelor's degree, according to the National Deaf Center.
In the UK, part of the problem is the funding mechanism itself: the Disabled Students' Allowance, a grant covering interpreter costs at , has an upper cap that often falls short of real sign interpreter rates, leaving the university or the student to cover the gap.
Interpreter access at universities still depends too often on whether it fits this year's budget, not on whether it's a student's right. This candidate's competence was never the problem.
It’s time to hear this issue.
The barriers in education for students aren’t a lack of talent or drive—it’s the lack of a system that treats them as equals to the hearing. Share this post so this voice can reach university authorities and decision-makers.
