Global Interpreting Services announces the launch of Have You Heard?, an eLearning course designed to train public safety personnel and civilian staff to effectively communicate with Deaf, hard of hearing and low-English communities.
“It is important for our law enforcement to provide effective communication to its citizens and not all citizens are the same,” said Dawn Flanigan, CEO of Global Interpreting Services. “We designed the course knowing the dire need for organizations to be properly trained on how to effectively communicate when the individual has a hearing loss or when English is not their primary language.”
Public safety personnel needs to communicate with these citizens as more than 25 million people in the United States are considered low-English speaking and 30 million people have hearing loss. This course helps improve language access in these departments and builds trust within the communities they serve.
Officers and staff will be trained to:
- Recognize the characteristics of an individual who is Deaf, hard of hearing or has limited English skills
- Establish communication with those populations
- Comply with federal, state, and local guidelines for providing services to those populations including the Americans with Disabilities Act and the Civil Rights Act
The course features three parts with several modules that can be done at the user's own pace. It offers knowledge checks throughout the training and a final completion certificate.
For more information on the training, visit our Police Training Page. The course is made up of three 40-minute parts. Each part can be paused at any time and restarted when convenient. Departments can track who is taking the course and the progress they're making through a secure learning management system (LMS). Each student will be given a login and password to sign into the LMS.
Global Interpreting Services, established in 1996, has three decades of experience training public safety personnel. They are experts in language services, assisting clients nationwide. Their full services include American Sign Language (ASL) and Foreign Language interpreting, video interpreting, phone interpreting and document translation.
