Jean Gough's Story

Jean GoughJean Gough is a Speech to Text Reporter (STTR) with a wide range of experience working in the UK and across Europe. Her quiet and endearing demeanour combined with her total professionalism has supported countless deaf people and their families. She is a friendly face who has tremendous patience and puts everyone at ease.

Working for Hearing Concern LINK's Intensive Rehabilitation Programme, Jean's exceptional reporting skills gave many deaf people access to meetings and training sessions which they would not otherwise have had the confidence to attend. Her accuracy and thoroughness meant that service users could actively participate in meetings knowing that they fully understood all aspects of what was being discussed. She often stayed late with the group she had been working with.

Jean was previously one of the most experienced subtitlers working for the BBC and then Red Bee Media providing live subtitling on TV programmes such as the BBC News and Big Brother.

As a member of the National Registers of Communication Professionals Working with Deaf and Deafblind People (NRCPD), she has been a fabulous representative for her fellow professionals, as indeed she has at the UKCoD ACE partnership meetings. She has lobbied for better qualifications with Signature and for professionals who are already appropriately skilled to be recognised on the register of Speech to Text Reporters. This year her efforts paid off with NRCPD accepting proposals put forward by the Association of Verbatim Speech to Text Reporters and their partners for a professional skills assessment to enter the Register. This autumn will see the first new entrants to the STTR register in more than three years and an expanded resource for deaf people to utilise. This huge step forward is largely thanks to Jean's tireless commitment to her profession and the people it serves.

Jean said, "I'm thrilled to have received this award and it's a real privilege to have received public recognition from colleagues and service users for my work as a speech to text reporter. I was shortlisted for this award two years ago, so it was a real surprise to hear I had been nominated for a second time, but it was worth the wait.

I would like to thank those who nominated me, whoever they are! Speech to text is still regarded as a relatively new area of communication support and I hope that winning this award will help to raise greater awareness of its value in so many different situations."

Find out about the other winners at the 2011 Signature Annual Awards