Jeff McWhinney

Jeff McWhinney was born in 1960 in Belfast, Northern Ireland. He is a leader in the UK deaf community.

McWhinney was born into a Deaf family in Belfast, both his brother and sister are Deaf.

His family did not escape the pain of The Troubles in Northern Ireland when loyalists killed his cousin because she married a Roman Catholic.

McWhinney was raised in a bilingual environment, his family who used both British Sign Language (BSL) and as some may say, Northern Ireland Sign Language (NISL) and English. He came to pick up Irish Sign Language (ISL) from the community. He later learned to communicate in American Sign Language (ASL), and French Belgian Sign Language (LSFB).

He was educated at the Jordanstown Schools in Belfast, where there was a teacher who also taught his father. He then went to Mary Hare Grammar School for the Deaf in the 1970s.

In Belfast, McWhinney was frustrated by the Deaf clubs and organisations that were not managed by deaf people. He started the Northern Ireland Workshop with the Deaf which invited speakers such as Paddy Ladd and George Montgomery to speak about Deaf liberation.

He became the first Secretary of the Euro Youth Deaf Council.

His big break in his career within charities for deaf people, came about in 1984 when he worked for Breakthrough (now DeafPlus), a charity working towards integration between deaf and hearing people.

In 1995 he became chief executive officer (CEO) of the British Deaf Association (BDA), one of the largest societies for deaf people in the UK. From this position, he was involved in gaining UK Government recognition of British Sign Language as an official language.

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