If you ask most businesses whether they’re accessible, they’ll point to their step-free reception entrance or their screen reader-compatible website. Both matter, but for Deaf customers, the barriers they encounter are different, and they tend to sit in places businesses rarely think to look.
The assumption baked into most customer journeys is that everyone can make or receive a phone call, follow a verbal announcement or watch a video without needing anything extra.
However, for the 11 million people in the UK living with some form of hearing loss, including around 150,000 British Sign Language (BSL) users, that assumption creates friction at almost every customer touchpoint. This blog looks at where those barriers tend to appear and what you can do to remove them.
Where Deaf customers hit walls
The barriers Deaf customers face are, sadly, still built into the way most businesses operate.
If your primary customer service route is a phone line, you’ve already made it harder for a significant portion of your customers to reach you.
But it doesn’t stop there. In-person environments often rely on verbal announcements, spoken greetings and staff who’ve never had any guidance on communicating with a Deaf person. Video content on websites, like product explainers, onboarding guides and FAQs, frequently has no captions or captions so inaccurate they’re worse than useless.
Deaf customers who repeatedly hit barriers like these don’t complain. They leave. They find a competitor whose service works for them, or they disengage entirely. That’s a direct business cost, and it’s avoidable.
First contact: make it easy to reach you
When a Deaf customer wants to get in touch with your business, what are their options?
Good accessibility at this stage doesn’t require an overhaul. Live chat, email and SMS are all straightforward to offer and work well.
For BSL users, a video contact option, such as Sign Solutions’ InterpretersLive! platform, allows them to connect with your team through a qualified BSL interpreter in real time, without needing to rely on a third party to make the call for them.
Video relay services work in a similar way. A BSL interpreter acts as an intermediary between the Deaf caller and your team, translating in both directions. Your staff don’t need to know any BSL for this to work. They just need to be aware that calls may come through this way and be ready to communicate at a measured pace.
If you’re in the public sector or a larger customer-facing business, it’s worth auditing your contact options through this lens. A phone number as the sole route into your business isn’t just unhelpful. In some contexts, it could put you in conflict with your obligations under the Equality Act 2010.
In-person and on-site accessibility
Walk into most reception areas, and you’ll find an environment designed entirely around people who can hear. A receptionist who calls out your name. An intercom you speak into. A waiting area where updates are announced verbally.
For a Deaf visitor, these small barriers add up to an experience that feels unwelcoming, even when no one intends it that way.
Screens showing queue updates, appointment confirmations or wayfinding information take the reliance off verbal communication. Visual door alerts and alternatives to intercoms can help at entry points.
Beyond the physical environment, your front-of-house and customer-facing staff should be equipped to communicate with Deaf visitors confidently. That doesn’t mean everyone needs to learn BSL, although a few basic signs can go a long way. It means knowing to face the person when speaking, not covering your mouth, offering to write things down, and not defaulting to speaking to a hearing companion instead. Having a qualified BSL interpreter available also helps to remove any communication barriers.
Digital accessibility
Many businesses feel they’ve covered digital accessibility once they’ve added captions to their video content. However, captions are a baseline, and auto-generated captions, which most platforms produce by default, are often riddled with errors. Names, technical terms and anything said quickly or with an accent tend to come out wrong. So, if you rely on auto-captions, it’s worth reviewing them against your content before assuming the job is done.
For BSL users, written English and BSL are distinct languages. BSL has its own grammar, structure and syntax. It isn’t a signed version of English. This means that even well-written text content won’t always be fully accessible to someone whose first language is BSL. For high-priority content, such as a key product explanation, a welcome message or a guide to your services, a BSL video version is worth considering. It doesn’t need to replace written content but work alongside it.
Two-factor authentication delivered via an automated phone call or account verification that requires you to speak to someone can lock Deaf users out of their own accounts. If your digital systems include steps like these, they’re worth reviewing for alternatives such as one-time SMS passcodes or authenticator apps.
Deaf Awareness Training
You can put the right systems in place and still fall short if your staff aren’t sure how to respond when a Deaf customer walks through your door.
Deaf Awareness Training gives your team the knowledge they need to communicate clearly, avoid unhelpful assumptions, and handle interactions with Deaf customers with confidence rather than hesitation. Staff who know how to speak clearly and face the person directly, who don’t assume that a Deaf customer needs help from a companion, and who know what communication options your business offers can make a real difference to the experience your Deaf customers have.
At Sign Solutions, we offer Deaf Awareness Training tailored to customer-facing teams, covering communication basics, Deaf culture and the practical steps your staff can take to be more inclusive in their day-to-day interactions.
Onboarding and welcoming new customers
Onboarding is where many businesses’ accessibility efforts fall apart. One of the most effective things you can do to prevent this is to build a communication preferences question into your early customer touchpoints. Asking your customers how they’d like to be contacted and whether they have any accessibility requirements costs almost nothing and signals that your business has thought about this. It also means you’re not scrambling to adapt when a Deaf customer flags a problem mid-process.
Written and BSL-accessible onboarding materials, clear confirmation of which contact routes are available, and a named point of contact who knows what to do if something needs adapting are achievable steps for most businesses, regardless of size.
How can Sign Solutions help?
Accessible customer journeys don’t come from a single change. They come from a series of considered decisions across every stage of how customers interact with your business, from how they first get in touch to how you support them once they’re on board.
At Sign Solutions, we work with businesses and public sector organisations to help make those steps achievable. Whether you need qualified BSL interpreters for in-person or remote interactions, a BSL video contact option through our InterpretersLive! platform, or Deaf Awareness Training for your customer-facing teams, we can help you build something that works. To find out more, call us on 0121 447 9620, email bookings@signsolutions.uk.com or get in touch via a BSL video interpreter.
