Can you hear me? Communication, Deafness and Innovation in times of masks and screens

This webinar panel considers the communication implications and challenges of this pandemic, and the restrictions that came with COVID-19 for us all. A powerful way to think about communication is with the experts in the signing, audio-speech, hearing-affected, and Deaf communities. The panel is composed of communicators, including a signing expert, who will share their reflections, and begin to project us into a future of innovations emerging from the pandemic, reflecting on how we all might learn from this epoch, and build new communication platforms in alliance with these experts.

Dr Victor de Andrade

Dr Victor de Andrade is an audiologist and senior lecturer in the Department of Speech Pathology and Audiology at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, supervises students from the university on their clinical placements, and works in the University Speech and Hearing Clinic. He has reviewed and published in scholarly journals and has presented at both national and international conferences. Victor has also been invited to advise and consult on deafness and assistive technology to the WHO, UNICEF, and WIPO. He also sits on the University Council as well as the Human Research Ethics Committee (Medical) and is a member of the Disability Interest Group. His areas of interest relate to, amongst others, socio-cultural and contextual aspects of deafness, noise in learning environments, the phenomenology and experience of deafness, including third-party disability, Deafness, disability, sexuality, professional matters, and assistive technologies. Victor has worked in a variety of settings and contexts in South Africa and abroad.

Hilten Bawa

Hiten Bawa is an artist, architect and illustrator based in Johannesburg, South Africa. Hiten is a profoundly deaf person with bilateral cochlear implants. He works primarily with acrylic paints, watercolours and inks to express his cultural identity and perspectives of people with disabilities. Bawa's artwork overlaps his interest in the South African Indian diaspora and South Africa's Apartheid based architectural structures, which manipulate access as a medium of control. Bawa also goes on to parallel the hand signals of sign language with Classical Indian dance hand movements and local taxi hand directions in a creole styled visual language from his unique perspective. He holds a Master of Architecture (Prof) degree from the University of Cape Town and runs his own creative practice called Studio HB. He had exhibited his work in South Africa, Japan and Spain. He is currently working on a wide range of creative work from graphic novel to architectural illustrations, paintings and designing new houses. Bawa was a finalist for the inaugural SA TAXI Foundation Art Award in 2015 and is a part of the prestigious J.P. Morgan Chase Art Collection.

Dr Kyrtania Pather

Kyrtania is a lecturer and course co-ordinator for the Health System Sciences 3rd year course in the Department of Family Medicine, where she focuses on teaching final year undergraduate students about the South African health care system and the quadruple burden of disease plaguing it. She has also just completed her PhD in cell biology. Her research focused on the implications of breast cancer hormone treatment on platelet activation by studying various molecular alterations and their responses. Kyrtania is passionate about learning, teaching, sharing knowledge with a keen interest breast cancer research and the possible outcomes treatments and co-treatments may have, especially with the increasing prevalence of more aggressive breast cancers within the South African population.

Anthony Gama

Antony Gama was born hearing and became Deaf at the age of 5. He is currently working at the Wits Language School as part time facilitator, teaching SA Sign Language, and pursuing a full time PGCE in Deaf Education, and hoping to make more changes in Deaf learners’ lives, because we have shortage of Deaf qualified teachers in SA.

Khetha Makoatsane

Khetha Makoatsane is a SA Sign Language Interpreter at the University of the Witwatersrand Disability Rights Unit. She holds an Honours degree in Language Practice from the University of the Free State (UFS). She has also completed a Level 1 Sign Language Interpreter training with North West University as well as legal and medical interpreting courses through DeafSA