This article rethinks the impact of sign language interpreting services (SLIS) as a social institution. It starts from the observation that “access” for deaf people is tantamount to availability of sign language interpreters, and the often uncritically proposed and largely accepted solution at the institutional level to lack of access seems to be increasing the number of interpreters. Using documented examples from education and health care settings, we raise concerns that arise when SLIS become a prerequisite for public service provision. In doing so, we problematize SLIS as replacing or concealing the need for language-concordant education and public services. We argue that like any social institution, SLIS should be studied and analyzed critically. This includes more scrutiny about how different kinds of “accesses” can be implemented without SLIS, and more awareness of the contextual languaging choices deaf people make beyond the use of interpreters.
How disabled people gather and share common experiences is empirically not a well-addressed issue in discussions about disability identity and unity. Among Deaf people, there is a long tradition for meeting in transnational contexts. Based on an intensive multi sited fieldwork at several transnational events, the article presents some examples of how Deaf people negotiate social positions as Deaf that value difference. They gather as a community of communicators, marked by an identification founded on sharing one another's languages, common histories and through strong similarities in terms of culture and feeling oppressed by the hearing society. The identity negotiations taking place at these meeting places prove relevant to disabled people in the way they explore pressing issues such as accessibility and conflicting perspectives on what a disability shall mean in the lives of people affected by impairment. Politics of disabilitySince the 1960s, inclusion and integration policies have gained prominence in the disability field.According to this position, disabled people should be educated in ordinary schools and participate alongside any other citizen in all of society's institutions. The goal of disability politics should be to make disability as irrelevant as possible, with an implicit degradation of the disabled body as less-than-normal.Opposed to this perspective we find a position whereby disability is defined as a difference alongside any other bodily difference. Based on this notion of a non-pathological body, disabled people will gain from building coalitions based on shared positions and experiences and come together as an interest group.According to this perspective, the nurturing of a disability identity is important. The goal of assimilating into normality, inherent in discussions on integration and inclusion, is challenged. A space for difference, for alternative normalities, is opened (Stiker 1999;Swain, French and Cameron 2003;Shakespeare 2006; Siebers 2008). However, how disabled people gather together and form common experiences is empirically not a well-addressed issue in discussions about disability identity and unity. To understand
This article focuses on the similar approaches to, yet different contexts of legal recognition of sign languages in Sweden and Norway. We use examples from sign language documentation (both scientific and popular), legislation that mentions sign language, organization of implementation of sign language acquisition, and public discourse (as expressed by deaf associations' periodicals from the 1970s until today), to discuss the status and ideologies of sign language, and how these have affected deaf education. The legal documents indicate that Norway has a stronger and more wide-reaching legislation, especially sign language acquisition rights, but the formal legal recognition of a sign language is not necessarily reflected in how people discuss the status of the sign language. Our analysis reveals that the countries' sign languages have been subject to language shaming, defined as the enactment of linguistic subordination. The language shaming has not only been enacted by external actors, but has also come from within deaf communities. Our material indicates that language shaming has been more evident in the Norwegian Deaf community, while the Swedish Deaf community has been more active in using a "story of legislation" in the imagination and rhetoric about the Swedish deaf community and bilingual education. The similarities in legislation, but differences in deaf education, popular discourse and representation of the sign languages, reveal that looking at the level and scope of legal recognition of sign language in a country, only partially reflects the acceptance and status of sign language in general. ARTICLE HISTORY
<p>Key Words</p><p>Video interpreting, video relay services, comparative politics, legislation, accessibility</p><p>Abstract</p><p>The different definitions of video interpreting (VI) services in the U.S., Sweden and Norway serve as a foundation for a discussion on how a technology that at first may appear the same, serves widely different goals in different social and political contexts. In the U.S., video interpreting is defined as a telecommunication service to secure functional equivalence for all. In Sweden, the goal is to secure access to telecommunication services for disabled people. In Norway, VI is defined and organized as an extension of the public sign language interpreter service. This article gives insight into how ideology and politics shape the organization of a certain technology or service and impact the very scope and benefit of the technology itself. Further, the paper shows how the emerging VI services are interpreted, in light of the existing politcal ideals in each of the three countries, and how the services gradually also relay a certain set of rights through the way they are organised.</p>
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