Dolly Vuchkova is an IT professional from Bulgaria who constantly develops herself, loves working with people and helping them. After many years of experience in the field of Human Resources, she decided to master sign language and discover a whole new pool of unexplored talents.
In an interview with IT Logs, Dolly shares her journey and motivation behind learning sign language to support and empower deaf individuals in building their IT careers.
IT Logs: When was the right time for a sign language course for you?
Dolly Vuchkova: One morning in our regular daily team meetings in my previous job, a colleague of mine from the marketing team suggested an idea for a CSR initiative. She introduced us to the Jamba organization, which works with people with different needs (that’s what we call people with disabilities). The organization was looking for support with HR expertise to help its members find better jobs. The training we were required to prepare included topics on how to write a good CV, how to behave during the interview process, what they need to know about employment contracts and the hiring process and of course, most of all the about the IT field – where they should start training and where they can find positions after that. We agreed to prepare an extensive half-day training on these topics.
However, in order to make the training relevant to people’s needs, we decided to hold a meeting with the Jamba team to discuss the main career problems of their followers and the communication specifics of these people to cover. We talked for over 2 hours, and at the end of the meeting, one of the girls from the team said, “You know, I was born deaf.” I was shocked because she seemed to listen to us throughout the meeting and respond appropriately. I admit that she pronounced some words strangely, but I thought that might be due to an accent or dialect. So, it amazed me how this girl was reading our lips and answering without hearing a sound.
That was a turning point for me. Her dramatic story showed how much effort some people put in order to communicate with the rest of the world. Although I had already considered it, this was the actual moment when I told myself that I had to start learning sign language.
But before I enrolled in the courses, we did this training for Jamba, and it was full of other surprises that fueled my desire. When the training started, I was a bit confused. I started talking about careers in IT and noticed that no one in the audience was looking at me like they didn’t care about the topic. Turns out they were all looking at the translator next to me and were actually super focused on trying to understand my words through the sign translation the girl was providing them with, so they were actually really excited about the topic.
Later in the networking part of the training, a young deaf boy came to me and told me that he had ambitions to become a UI/UX designer. At that time, he was already studying to be a graphic designer and I asked him to send me his CV and portfolio. After seeing them I found his work amazing! So, after much negotiation with my company at the time, he became the first deaf person I helped with a career in IT, even before I actually enrolled in the course.
I admit, it wasn’t easy. I had to fight hard for him to get hired. The challenges were many and there were many administrative aspects that had to be agreed and well thought out. But I managed, and for almost a year now he has been working as a graphic designer.
Then I realized that being able to use sign language would be of great benefit both to me as a professional and to help deaf people with careers in the IT field, because believe me, there is a lot of undiscovered talent among them.
I am happy with my decision to learn sign language for one more reason. During my studies I met many amazing deaf people with even more amazing stories. There are many talented and smart people among them, but unfortunately, the rest of the world can’t see them because they are often rejected by my colleagues in the industry at the first stage as incompetent and unfit. Perhaps now is the time for employers and recruitment specialists to open their eyes to them.
What is sign language training, and from where did you start?
One day I decided to look for sign language courses, and happily, I came across a brand new academy called Stray Sheep. It was founded by two best friends – Boris Bandev and Alexander Kalinov. I am extremely grateful to both of them for the time and effort they put into teaching people sign language in a very creative and fun way.
Last November marked the beginning of my course, and by January 2023, I had progressed to the second level, graduating in May. It involved two hours of online training with a deaf teacher and interpreter once a week. We went through various important topics starting with the alphabet, numbers and months and moving on to basic pronouns, adjectives and verbs. Every time we had homework it involved recording a video. That was the funniest part, seeing yourself from the outside, turning your thoughts into words in sign language.
I am currently enjoying my summer vacation, but I plan to resume my studies in September.
Do you have the opportunity to practice sign language after the course?
I keep in touch with some of my deaf teachers and friends. Also, occasionally, I watch the news in sign language and often learn new words from there. Also, before I left my previous job and joined Sigma Software, I met the guy I hired as a designer several times in the office. He was so happy to speak sign language with someone at his workplace. That made me feel like I was in seventh heaven, and want to meet and help such people even more.
For now, I’m trying to help other deaf people find a job by advising, mentoring and helping them with their CVs. Unfortunately, I cannot directly offer them positions since, as part of Bulgaria’s newly launched Sigma Software team, I mainly work for highly qualified positions requiring in-depth expert knowledge and many years of experience. At this stage, many people with different needs must first be given an equal chance to be trained, do internships and be invested in their development by employers. Then, there is a need to change the attitude of companies towards these people and start hiring the deaf, blind or differently abled because, among them, there are so many diamonds in the rough.
Is sign language challenging to master?
Learning foreign languages has always been a challenge for me, I guess like many other people. Bulgarian sign language is a language like any other. In general, if a person is good at languages, sign language will not differ. For me, however, it meant a lot of hard work and persistence in learning. Sign language is not just about learning a few hand signs, it also involves controlling facial expressions, expensive speaking and emotions. Also, speaking in sign language (as in any other language) requires you to start thinking accordingly. In this case, this means simplifying your usual vocabulary.
The most challenging part was that not every word you use in your everyday vocabulary can be translated. For example, conjunctions and prepositions are rarely translated. They are simply omitted. And yet you have to express yourself so that everyone can understand you.
It is also surprising that you must be highly focused when communicating in sign language. Let’s say you’re having a conversation in sign language with somebody, and you get distracted for a while, looking away, just to say “hello” to a colleague who is just walking down the hall. At this point, it is possible to miss the meaning or idea of the conversation entirely. This, in turn, helped me to improve my concentration in general.
Why we should engage people with special needs in IT?
I believe that people with hearing or vision problems could do as well in many IT-related occupations as anyone else if they had an equal chance to be trained, mentored and accepted by their employers and colleagues. And this opens up a whole new market for my colleagues in HR.
While collaborating with differently abled people, I met a person in a wheelchair who was also blind. He certainly has a hard life, needing constant help. But even so, I was impressed by how intelligent he was. He reads a lot of books, uses a computer and writes articles. He has excellent language skills and translates books from several languages. And also makes podcasts and records audiobooks. And he told me that doing all this keeps him alive and happy and helps him see meaning in life — motivation of that magnitude is often lacking in people without health problems.
Innovations in technology are important for these people and open many doors for them. Usually, when hiring a new employee in the IT sector, we look for competencies in a specific area – be it finance, healthcare or automotive, for example. Where to find better “domain knowledge”, as we call it, than in a person with similar functional challenges. This is especially true when it comes to applications targeting people with disabilities or accessibility of software and devices for the general public.
Unfortunately, in today’s world, many modern technologies are not well thought out on how exactly they could be helpful to people in a similar condition. Therefore, developing such a new market would be valuable not only for differently abled people themselves but also for employers in general.
