Tina Lannin has encountered many obstacles due to her deafness. But they led her to create her own company and become the UK’s foremost lip-reading expert.
Schooling
The seeds were planted early on for Tina Lannin’s future career as a lip-reading expert. She was born deaf to a hearing family. Her parents never accepted her hearing loss. As a mode of survival, she learned to lip-read quickly. Despite a certain lack of understanding, she did attend a partial hearing unit (PHU) until the age of 11.
“Then I attended a hearing boarding school, which was a tough experience, including bullying by other students,”
says Lannin.
She moved to Gibraltar at the age of 16. Despite the challenges of other students, she was able to find work with the local government because she was bilingual. Despite this being something she loved, it wasn’t to last.
“The Armed Forces started pulling out of Gibraltar and we were going to be made redundant, so I decided to go to the UK and get a degree in Business Studies and Japanese,” Lannin recalls. I didn’t realize my hearing had deteriorated to the point where I couldn’t use a radio aid until I actually arrived at university and tried to use one – I couldn’t hear a thing.”
Eventually choosing to pursue law but with no support, Lannin put in many extra hours of study. She had to get up at 4 AM each morning in order to keep up with her hearing peers.
“I read law and did legal work placements, but I could not secure my articles,” Lannin says. “Law firms just couldn’t see past the disability. I really struggled to get my first job after university. When employers received my CV, they would ring up, very keen to speak to me. My mother would pick up the phone and tell them , ‘She is deaf and can’t use the phone,’ and they would instantly lose interest.”
Experiment
It was at this time that Lannin tried an experiment. She sent six CVs off to prospective employers detailing her hearing loss, sign language skills, and deaf awareness qualification. She followed these up with another six CVs sent to other would-be employers, but this time with no mention of hearing loss.
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