Meet Canberra's only fully accredited Auslan interpreter who has been communicating crucial information during the bushfire crisis

And front and centre of most of them have been Auslan interpreters, ensuring deaf people around the country have the same access to the crucial information.

They have stood next to premiers, fire chiefs and even prime ministers to make sure their messages are getting across.

The Canberra deaf community are very familiar with the territory's only fully certified Australian Sign Language, or Auslan, interpreter, Amanda Dolejsi.

Mrs Dolejsi had an early introduction to sign language, while she was growing up in Griffith and Narrabundah, as one of her childhood friends, Paul, was deaf.

Paul's family didn't want him signing because of the stigma around sign language at the time.

"It was looked at as something for those that failed in hearing and lip reading," Mrs Dolejsi said.

But regardless, Paul taught their group of friends to finger spell.

"It was very difficult to lip read when you're playing hide and seek in the dark, which we did a lot back then in summer," she said.

These skills became very useful when she met her now husband, Ivan, when she was 16 years old.

Ivan was born completely deaf and arrived in Australia as a refugee from Slovakia as a four-year-old.

Meeting Ivan, and his many deaf friends, motivated Mrs Dolejsi to improve her Auslan skills and she said it included her in a wonderful community working with Ivan and several other deaf people for Defence in the 1970s.

Management at Defence would regularly call on her expertise to help interpret new instructions to deaf staff members and that was her entrance into interpreting.

"When I look back on it, it bears very little resemblance to what I do today," Mrs Dolejsi said.

"I was 18 or 19, I didn't know what I was doing."

Unlike spoken language interpreters in an official setting, Auslan interpreters interpret simultaneously with the person speaking.

Mrs Dolejsi recalled an early job she had interpreting a meeting of a disability advisory body and not knowing the sign for Commonwealth, advisory and several others.

"That's when I realised what I had to do was enormous," she said.

"You can't ask them to stop and ask what they mean, it's very difficult to seek clarification."

This has again proven complicated when interpreting for fire chiefs on the bushfires destroying huge swathes of the country.

Mrs Dolejsi had a firefighter explain to her in detail what a pyrocumulus cloud was so that she had a clear picture of what the fire created storm cloud was that she could interpret for Auslan viewers.

"I didn't want to have to finger spell that one!" she said.

The most important thing for Mrs Dolejsi is that deaf people receive the exact same message that people hearing it do.

Auslan is its own language, it is not just a set of symbols to represent English words, all of the facial expressions and movements have a meaning and importance to them.

In the early days of Auslan interpreters, Mrs Dolejsi remembers comments questioning why interpreters were on screen, that it was distracting and that they looked funny.

It is an expressive language, but that is to reflect the various voice intonations people naturally use that are of no benefit to a deaf person.

In this current situation where ACT Emergency Services Agency commissioner Georgeina Whelan has spoken about extreme conditions and danger levels, Mrs Dolejsi must convey the stress she puts on each word with her expressions.

"You have to make deaf people understand it's a serious situation," she said.

"As long as deaf people are getting the message, I don't really care what hearing people think."

While things have dramatically improved for deaf people in the decades since she was playing hide and seek with Paul as a child, Mrs Dolejsi sees room for improvement.

Too often at important press conferences there isn't an interpreter or captions being used, she said.

Even more frustrating is when an interpreter is present but a television producer asks for a tighter shot of the person speaking, cutting out the interpreter completely.

"That decision is discriminating against everyone that uses Auslan," she said.

"They need to actually consult the deaf community. It's not just about ticking boxes."

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Deaf Society chief executive Leonie Jackson said Auslan is the primary language of thousands of Australians, therefore it was essential to provide access to information in Auslan during a crisis.

"We commend the ACT Emergency Services Agency for providing an Auslan interpreter for its most recent public announcements and look forward to working collaboratively to improve access in future," Ms Jackson said.

"It is also imperative that broadcasters ensure the Auslan interpreter remains in shot at all times during emergency announcements."

Even though she understood it was a difficult situation, Mrs Dolejsi said it was disappointing that when Batemans Bay and parts of the South Coast lost power and communication after the New Year's Eve blazes the advice was for people to tune into radio.

"It was like taking deaf people back 10 or 15 years."

Mrs Dolejsi sees her job as "empowering deaf people to make the right choices because they have all the information to make those choices for themselves".

The ACT, and Australia more broadly, are desperately in need of Auslan interpreters and Mrs Dolejsi said "if everyone learned even a little bit of Auslan it would help".