Episodes, Samantha Baines
Living with Hearing Loss and Deafness with Samantha Baines
SENDcast Episode
Living with Hearing Loss and Deafness
with Samantha Baines
This Deaf Awareness Week, we welcome Samantha Baines to the podcast to explore what it’s like living with hearing loss and deafness. Samantha is an award-winning actress, comedian and broadcaster who discovered she was deaf nearly 10 years ago and now advocates for accessibility.
“People just assume deaf equals absolutely no hearing. And actually, it is more complicated than that.”
— Samantha Baines
Samantha shares practical insights, challenges misconceptions, and explores what meaningful accessibility looks like in everyday life and in education. They discuss:
- The language that deaf communities prefer (and why words matter).
- How to make meetings, classrooms and public spaces more accessible.
- The role of BSL interpreters, captions and lip-speaking (and why “one size fits all” doesn’t work).
- Practical ideas schools can apply.
Watch on YouTube
About the guest
Samantha Baines
Samantha Baines is a multi award-winning actress, broadcaster and bestselling author as well as a businesswoman, speaker and mentor. She is a proud deaf and disabled person and advocate for women and disabled communities.
Samantha presents on The One Show, BBC Morning Live, Rip Off Britain and BBC Radio London. As an actress she has starred in Netflix’s The Crown, Romesh Ranganathan’s sitcom Avoidance, Alan Carr’s comedy Changing Ends, Call the Midwife, Silent Witness and Magic Mike Live. She is a voting BAFTA member and has been a judge at the National Television Awards and the Nasen Awards.
A proud deaf and disabled woman, she is a hearing aid wearer, lipreading and is learning BSL. Samantha is ambassador for the Royal National Institute for Deaf People, patron of Stagetext, and the author of the award-winning Harriet Versus the Galaxy and bestselling non-fiction book Living With Hearing Loss and Deafness: a guide to owning it and loving it.
A professional speaker and TedxOxford speaker, she has spoken at the House of Commons, BAFTA, BFI and FCA. She is host of the multi-award nominated podcast The Divorce Social, a No.1 relationship podcast on iTunes reaching over half a million downloads.
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