The Paralympics are almost underway in Paris — and the nation's very own sweetheart, Rose Ayling-Ellis, has just been named as the first deaf person to ever present live sport on television as she joins the broadcasting team alongside Clare Balding.
Ayling-Ellis is set to co-host Afternoon Live alongside Clare and fellow presenters Ade Adepitan and five-time Paralympic swimming champion and Bafta-winner Ellie Simmonds, using live sign language.
“It is really exciting that I am the first deaf person to host a live sports TV show,” she told the BBC of her role. "People seem to think that hosting a show is also to do with hearing, but now I'm here to prove that doesn't have to be."
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Rose is no stranger to making history: as an actor, she has appeared in a number of stage productions and films over the years including Casualty and EastEnders. In 2021, she was the first-ever deaf contestant and winner on Strictly Come Dancing. She was also the first deaf person to ever read a bedtime story in BSL on Cbeebies.
"My career so far has been quite mad, and this is another job for me to challenge myself really," she said of her varied career to the BBC. "It is such a big challenge. No-one deaf has ever done this before. I think I'm addicted to being the first of doing something, and that is what I want to do."
A role model for everyone.
Rose has tirelessly used her platform to raise awareness for the deaf community in the UK, and also appeared in her own BBC documentary, Rose Ayling-Ellis: Signs for Change, in which she challenged the view that signing is inferior to speaking.
“The doctor would come up to my parents and say ‘I’m really sorry but she’s got a significant hearing loss’," she said at the time. “They would use language like ‘she has failed the hearing test’. So I’d ‘lost’ something and I’d ‘failed’ something. And that set me up for the rest of my life. And it’s been up to me to prove to people that being deaf is not a loss and it’s not a failure.”
Of the importance of championing sign language, she added: “I remember growing up, not being able to fully speak and not being able to fully sign, so I was often left out. And that has become part of my life, I’ve always known the feeling of being left out and not knowing what’s going on.
“By learning to sign, you’re giving so much love because you’re meeting them halfway rather than them doing all the work.”
The importance of representation cannot be overstated.
