International Day of Persons with Disabilities
https://www.un.org/en/observances/day-of-persons-with-disabilities
The BDA’s vision to Protect, Preserve and Promote British Sign Language (BSL) and Irish Sign Language (ISL) in Northern Ireland conforms to the United Nations ethos that "disability inclusion is an essential condition to upholding human rights" and that includes Deaf people who use BSL and ISL.
The United Nation’s theme this year is Transformative solutions for inclusive development: the role of innovation in fuelling an accessible and equitable world.
It is in recognition that the world is at a critical moment in the history of the UN and they are saying “it is time to act and find joint solutions in building a more sustainable and resilient world for all and for the generations to come.”
The transformative solution that prevents Deaf people being disabled by society is signed language, early access to it, and the lifelong right to use it freely throughout everyday life.
With the BSL Act passing into law earlier this year, the BDA are calling on the Government during International Day of Persons with Disabilities to review their policies to ensure BSL is embedded in everything they do to ensure this country is a more accessible and equitable place for Deaf people to live. We have highlighted some of the technological developments and solutions:
1. The transformative power of digital video technology is enabling signers to create and share content in their own languages, challenging the historic domination of speech and writing in the public sphere. It’s now easy for us (Deaf people) to tell the world about who we are, our beliefs and ideas. We can celebrate Deaf lives more effectively than ever, and the hearing world is increasingly beginning to notice and appreciate this.
Our friends at SignHealth revealed 74% of Deaf people found it more difficult to access healthcare during the pandemic and 78% said Government information shared during the pandemic was inaccessible.
Just recently, it was revealed that Deaf people are 4 times at risk of death compared to other groups of people:
https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity
Their study said:
- During the coronavirus pandemic, we have seen higher mortality rates in people with a hearing, vision or dual-sensory impairment relative to people in our comparison group for whom these impairments were not found, as identified via hospital records.
- We saw the biggest differences in COVID-19 related mortality rates in the younger group (aged 30 to 69 years), whereby rates for people with either:
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- a hearing impairment were 4.0 times higher
- vision impairment were 8.4 times higher
- or dual-sensory impairment were 11.7 times higher
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than the mortality rates for the same age group in our comparison group.
This highlights the incredibly important campaign that Lynn Stuart-Taylor launched at the start of the pandemic #WhereIsTheInterpreter. If the Government doesn’t make health warnings clear in BSL, Deaf and Deafblind people will die as a result.
2. Remote access to interpreting. Not one to replace in-person interpreting, remote access brings some transformative benefits, and assists the resilience and sustainability of the Deaf community. The best example to highlight is the new BSL 999 service: I think everyone is simply wondering how everyone managed without this for all these years, because it seems such an obvious resource to have available. The benefits of remote access to interpreting makes interpreting available to people in areas of low population density, for short interactions, at times outside the working day, etc. (Remote sign language interpreting in times of COVID-19 | Hogeschool Utrecht (hu.nl)) The need for them does also underline that there still aren’t enough interpreters even after 40 years of national registers. Since the Government has indicated in various places that they see improving interpreting provision as a priority: we agree, but it has to be done right ie with the Deaf community’s perspective at the forefront of planning.
3. We want to highlight digital resources like the BSL Corpus, which both acts as a way of preserving evidence of what BSL looks like and how Deaf people use it, and offers a publicly available basis for the development of BSL teaching resources – ie resources that can be used to make BSL available as a first language to deaf children, and can support wider public learning of BSL. It is really important to note that the Corpus should be sustained and extended, ensuring that BSL is a resilient language. Sign languages have been identified as ‘endangered’ languages by some researchers. Many languages around the world (see Scots - Languages - gov.scot (www.gov.scot)) have a core resources that are funded long-term by the state, in recognition that its language is at the heart of a community’s resilience. Keeping with the spirit of both the BSL (Scotland) Act 2015 and the BSL Act 2022 this kind of fundamental support should be given to BSL. The German Sign Language (DGS) corpus at Hamburg University as an example of what should be done and is financed by their Government.
4. Avatars. This is a more challenging one. It is clear that sign language avatars are coming. There are many projects around the world that are picking up speed as the technical resources get more effective. Signing avatars will inevitably be around in future, because there is money to be made from them. In principle, they can be useful. The question is, can we ensure they’re actually producing fluent signing (this is relatively easy) or good translations (this is harder) so that they’re truly valued by Deaf people – or will they just be a gee-whizz development that suits hearing computer engineers and big businesses but isn’t welcomed in the real world? Will they edge out flesh-and-blood translators and interpreters, harming employment prospects for Deaf people and allies? Many of the questions we could highlight are indicated in this paper by a Deaf scholar: Is “good enough” good enough? Ethical and responsible development of sign language technologies - ACL Anthology.
Happy International Day of Persons with Disabilities from the BDA!
