Deaf woman’s long journey to Buckingham Palace BSL speech

Hafwen’s journey to her historic speech started as far back as the age of 10, when she first started going to St John Ambulance groups.

She said: “My mum suggested I join. I wasn’t very confident at that time. I didn’t know how to communicate with people in the same group as me. I was very quiet.

“One friend from primary school helped me a lot. She tried to encourage me to communicate using pen and paper.”

At 18, she moved into the adult group and started supporting youth groups and helping them to learn to sign, as well as the adults she was volunteering alongside.

She said: “The adult training was much more important – the communication was important so we needed to use text messaging and notes on our phones to communicate. Some people were signing quite well.

“Volunteering is quite hard work. I was quite nervous about doing volunteer work because I couldn’t communicate very well with some of the hearing people.

“But some of my friends helped me and encouraged me and then I noticed one person could actually sign quite well, and did some signing with me and writing on bits of paper.”

For aid with communication, she works with another member of staff, saying: “It’s easier to have a hearing member of staff and me to be with them.”

She has covered festivals with 5,000 attendees, large sporting events and gigs and has done everything from bandaging injured people to performing CPR.