Hilde Haualand, Maartje De Meulder
Communicating to linguistically diverse audiences, including deaf people, is best achieved by using native languages and communication styles (Di Carlo et al 2022, Xu et al 2021, Pollard et al 2014). Although both deaf people, sign language interpreters and service providers experience considerable limits in communication even with an interpreter present, sign language interpreting services (SLIS) have become tied with ideologies of ‘access’ and ‘inclusion’ for deaf people (De Meulder & Haualand 2021). Notwithstanding the legal recognition of sign languages in an increasing number of countries, governmental language policies still often confine the right to sign languages as a right to SLIS, not as a right to access to language-concordant public services (De Meulder 2015). Since the outbreak of Covid-19, there has been a rapid increase in the presence of sign language interpreters at public briefings, but few governments have made an effort to provide public information in sign language outside these interpreted briefings. As such, the pandemic has probably contributed to reinforcing the ideology of interpreting as accessibility and inclusion. In this presentation we will first discuss if a discourse that equals SLIS with “access” actually obstructs language-concordant information and service provision for deaf people. Then we will discuss if and how deaf associations contribute to this discourse by framing language rights as a disability and accessibility issue. It may be that this framing has been an efficient strategy to increase the presence of sign language in public settings, but with the unintended and detrimental consequence that the right to sign language is confined to interpretations of spoken language provided by mostly hearing second language users of sign language.
De Meulder, M., & Haualand, H. (2021). Sign language interpreting services: A quick fix for inclusion? Translation and Interpreting Studies. The Journal of the American Translation and Interpreting Studies Association, 16(1), 19-40. doi:https://doi.org/10.1075/tis.18008.dem
De Meulder, M. (2015). The Legal Recognition of Sign Languages. Sign Language Studies, 15(4), 498-506. doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.1353/sls.2015.0018