We’re a partner of Happy to Translate, the initiative that supports organisations to engage with people who speak little or no English. In addition to translating information about Home Energy Scotland into other languages, braille and audio, callers to our advice centres can have a three-way conversation with an advisor and an interpreter in their chosen language or BSL, and we can arrange an interpreter for home-visits.
No matter what language our customers speak, where they’re from or what barriers they may face, we make sure we can clearly communicate so they receive quality service, energy and money saving advice and the support they need.
Through Home Energy Scotland, we’ve also been working in partnership with Scottish Water since 2017 to help households in Scotland save water, energy and money. This year, as part of our water saving programme, we worked with Deaf Action in Scotland to help make our water saving advice brochure more accessible.
For someone who uses British Sign Language (BSL), standard English could be their second or third language and for them, written English can be hard to understand. Adapting our communication materials into BSL is very important for inclusion, and we have now translated our water saving advice brochure into a series of eight simple and comprehensive BSL videos.