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Oliver Westbury is 21 and a full-time student at the University of Wolverhampton, doing an interactive multimedia communication course.
Oliver likes to get involved with all sorts of deaf events, organisations and sports, and he likes to travel. He was an assistant on the BDA deaf youth exchange trip to Japan last November, and in January he went to work as a volunteer at the Singapore school for deaf people, with a grant from the Jack Ashley Millennium Awards. Last summer he went backpacking in Europe with three friends, visiting 13 different countries over two months.
He uses the internet for e-mail, chatting with friends with MSN Messenger (messenger.msn.com) chats with other deaf people and to surf the web for information.
In 1999 Oliver developed his own website, Deafok.com, 'the quintessential website for young deaf people', while waiting to start his course at the University of Wolverhampton. The site has been growing ever since.
Brendan Casey is 28 and works as a webmaster, moderator and web community manager.
'My strong interests are to do with deaf people and the web,' he says. 'I fight for people online, and converse with a lot of deaf people online. My current interest is getting deaf people together webwise.'
Brendan's website, deafchatgroup.co.uk (DCG) was launched in February 2001. He spent five years personally collecting data from deaf services. Setting up and running the site has been 'an exhilarating experience', he says. 'It now has 1,000 members and there is no stopping it. We have recently introduced four new communities for four regions of the UK. I am excited at the development of these new MSN web communities.'
Brendan is soon moving to France, but he will continue to work to develop DCG and its new web communities. 'The more exposure the website gets,' he says, 'the more we as a community learn how to get on with each other online.'
James Freestone is 22. He's currently studying computing part-time at Greenwich University. When he's not studying he does odd jobs for extra cash to help him maintain his costly hobby of restoring classic Italian motors. He also likes socialising, travelling … 'Oh, I forgot to mention I like lazing around. A lot.'
James has been interested in computers and the internet from a young age – his first computer was a green-screen Amstrad! 'The internet has played a big part in my life,' he says. 'I'm a real old timer – I've been on it since 1994, long before anyone else I know. And I can really testify as to how far it has come since then.'
And the web has helped James cover some distance as well. The story of how he bought his car is a amazing example of the net's unpredictable potential. 'Two years ago, I was doing a web search and one of the links that got thrown up was The X1/9 Owners' Club,' James told VEE-TV. 'Curious, I read all the messages on the message board. The people posting them seemed so impassioned about their X1/9s and spoke of them so highly, I just had to buy one, even though I had only seen a couple on the road and had never actually driven one.
'I made friends with a bunch of people on the website, and we got talking and planned a trip to Turin in Italy – to the very factory where the car was built. By the time we returned we were like old friends.'
James uses the internet all the time – for buying, booking and for research and so on. 'It's brilliant for deaf people,' he says. 'I talk to a lot of my "real life" friends on the internet too – too much, I could add, as when we meet once again in real life it feels like an entirely different person I'm meeting!'
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