Use talking signs to reach tenants who can't speak English or read their mother tongue
About 12 months ago, Twin Valley Homes conducted a survey on the communication needs of our black and minority-ethnic tenants in Blackburn and Darwen.

We found that seven out of 10 tenants spoke English, and that many of those who could not speak very good English could not read their own language either. That ruled out providing written translations of documents so we decided to search for a more innovative solution.

We found it in the ladies toilets at Rothersthorpe service station in Northamptonshire – they had a sign that "spoke" to you if you pressed a button. It allowed you to give your opinion of the state of the toilets. We contacted the company, Talking Signs, and asked it to adapt the product to provide information about our services in a variety of languages.

Now we have a talking sign in one of our housing offices that outlines our core services in English, Urdu and Gujarati.

It's very popular, judging by the traffic through the office, and we're going to roll it out to our other offices. The first sign cost £1500-2000 for the translation, recording and equipment, but subsequent ones should cost £600-1000 because the translation has already been done.

We've got another sign with three faces on it – one smiling, one straight-mouthed and one frowning. When people have been to the counter, they touch one to show how they have been treated.

Source

Housing Today

Postscript

Sarah Laing, customer initiatives manager at Twin Valley Homes, spoke to Katie Puckett