Rose Ayling-Ellis has criticised deaf tokenism on television and poor accessibility services for hearing-impaired viewers at the Edinburgh Television Festival.
The EastEnders actress, 27, said that didn’t watch Strictly Come Dancing prior to joining the show due to slow, inaccurate BBC subtitles.
Speaking at the Edinburgh TV Festival, she said:
“One of the first things they asked me was if I watch the show; I told them no, simply because I couldn’t — it was not accessible to me. The live subtitles were too slow, leaving me always a step behind and excluded from the jokes. Even on iPlayer the subtitles had not been corrected.”
She went on to be critical of deaf characters being written by people with hearing, as well as hearing actors playing deaf characters.
“It can be frustrating, playing a hearing person’s perception of what a deaf person is like. I often receive a script that’s not quite right [e.g.] my character being in a room with a big group of people arguing with each other, following everything that is being said and even repeating things back to them.
“Or they will write my character as lip reading someone from impossibly far away, like I have a superpower, which is not realistic.
“I’m playing a deaf character that is either written as a hearing person or as a deaf stereotype. It’s time for deaf staff to be brought into the scripting process if they want to be realistic.”
She added that she had “asked countless times for a deaf consultant to work with the writing teams, to help advise on how to incorporate and respect deaf culture,” however she said that because production is fast and staff turnover is high, consultants are often forgotten.
The reigning Strictly champion announced earlier this month that she was leaving her role as Frankie Lewis in EastEnders to explore other opportunities.
