How did you discover terptree?

As a university, we use various suppliers, and as they weren’t on our procurement list, I wasn’t specifically aware of terptree originally. But I remember they were on a student’s Disabled Students Allowance 2 (DSA2) letter as a special request. To explain, when a student applies for DSA, either the independent Needs Assessor will find an appropriate provider for that student’s requirements, or the student can recommend one themselves. So in this particular case, they were recommended by the student, and it was my first encounter with terptree.

What were your initial requirements from terptree?

It was in relation to a deaf BSL user who needed support accessing a course. It wasn’t a taught course; it was a research course which is a bit unusual, so the student needed help to attend meetings with their supervisor and also support interpreting their written work.

What function has terptree performed for your organisation?

After a dialogue with the student about the type of role terptree were required to fulfil, it became clear this was a slightly unusual scenario. The student needed one-to-one support, not just interpreting: and they needed to attend face-to-face meetings and access support when translating written materials into BSL, which would help them with comprehension.

This is something we hadn’t seen or been required to facilitate before. In previous situations, it’s been a BSL interpreter interpreting verbally. However, in this case, written transcription was involved.

What benefits has this brought?

Aside from the obvious support with face-to-face and one-to-one meetings: because of our student’s difficulty understanding written English, having the interpreter on hand to sign benefited him hugely.

So in terms of how they’ve benefitted the university, they provided a level of access for this student and made it very straightforward in terms of management. They dealt directly with the student, and it’s an approach we prefer as it empowers the student to be independent and prepares them for future employment situations.

What would your advice be to others?

Our role within the university is to make things as streamlined and uncomplicated as possible for our students. However, DSA will often, understandably, make decisions based on budget. And in my experience, there are good and bad interpreting companies – as a student, you don’t really know what you will get. Our procurement system is quite rigid, and the system dictates that we work through a list of suppliers in the order they’re presented. So we recommend students make a specific request for their preferred interpreting company as the DSA assessor will take the student’s views into strong consideration.

Would you recommend terptree to other deaf people looking for an interpreting agency for access to work?

Based on our experiences so far, I would be happy to recommend terptree personally.

As an interpreting company, terptree has now been added to our procurement list. But as I mentioned previously, our default process is always to ask the student if they have a preferred provider – someone they’ve worked with before and are happy with. If they don’t and they ask us for a recommendation, we would happily suggest terptree.