Associate professor in Law at the University of the West of England, Bristol
Becoming the first deaf person in the UK to achieve the title of associate professor in law is something I am immensely proud of, though I have mixed feelings about being the first. It is an important personal milestone, but it also says something about how few deaf people have been able to enter and progress within the profession and legal academia.
I grew up in South Wales and have been deaf since birth. I am a British Sign Language (BSL) signer. I did not grow up in a deaf family and came to BSL through the deaf community. My experiences inevitably shaped my interest in law, equality and how legal systems respond to deaf people.
I qualified as a solicitor in 2007, but my route through the profession was not straightforward. After completing the Legal Practice Course at Cardiff University in 2003, I applied for more than 150 training contracts without success. I cannot know how many of those decisions were influenced by misconceptions about what a deaf person can do.
I was fortunate to begin working at the Royal Association for Deaf People (RAD) as an advice worker. Its senior management subsequently arranged for me to be seconded to South West London Law Centres to undertake a training contract, enabling me to fulfil my ambition of becoming a solicitor. I spent 11 years at RAD, eventually becoming director of legal services at its Deaf Law Centre. The work was about making legal advice genuinely accessible to deaf BSL signers. We developed ways for deaf people across the country to obtain legal advice directly in BSL, including remotely by webcam, something that was relatively innovative at the time. Research by the Deaf Law Centre found that 85% of deaf people surveyed preferred to receive legal advice from somebody able to communicate directly in BSL rather than through an interpreter.
I encountered questions in legal practice about language, communication, access and equality that I increasingly wanted to explore more deeply. I moved into legal education and completed my PhD at the University of Leicester in 2020, examining how equality law operates for deaf people and the role that legal recognition of sign languages might play in achieving equality.
I have taught law at the University of South Wales, Cardiff University and, since 2024, UWE Bristol, where I teach employment law. What I enjoy most about teaching is watching students develop the confidence to think critically about law rather than simply learning what it says.
One of my proudest achievements is developing Deaf Legal Theory. Much of equality and disability law starts from the assumption that the central issue facing deaf people is disability and therefore asks how existing systems can be made accessible through reasonable adjustments. Deaf Legal Theory starts somewhere different: what happens if we examine law from the lived experiences, languages and cultures of deaf people themselves?
That work culminated in my book, The Deaf Legal Dilemma: Challenging Equality Law. At the heart of the book is a distinction that has followed me throughout my career: providing access to an existing system is not necessarily the same thing as achieving equality. Sometimes we also need to question the assumptions on which that system has been built.
There has undoubtedly been progress in the profession. Technology and remote working have opened opportunities, and schemes such as Access to Work can provide essential support. There is also much greater awareness of reasonable adjustments than when I began. But significant barriers remain. Access too often still depends on an individual deaf person repeatedly explaining and justifying what they need. Access can sometimes be treated as the end goal rather than the starting point.
Deaf people should not simply be people whom the profession serves. They should be solicitors, barristers, academics, judges and decision-makers within it. That requires the profession to think beyond providing interpreters or making individual adjustments. BSL needs to be recognised as a language of professional and intellectual life. Organisations need to consider how recruitment, training, networking, progression and leadership opportunities work for deaf professionals.
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