She has been practicing as an OT clinician within acquired brain injury rehabilitation for 16 years. Her main areas of expertise are in neurological rehabilitation and disability research. Her doctoral work is on students with disabilities in higher education.Eva Magnus has a PhD from The Norwegian University of Science and Technology. She has a position as associate professor at the Discipline of Occupational Therapy at the same university. Her research has concentrated on studies within disability, everyday life and health promotion. She is a central member of the Professional Inclusive Higher Education (PIHE), which is an international research network of researchers focussing on disability in higher education and transition to employment.

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<p>Keywords</p><p>Criminal justice, Deaf, Sign Language, Interpreting, Profession</p><p>Abstract</p><p>Over the last thirty years Deaf people in Norway have obtained extensive rights to sign language interpreting. During this period, a public national interpreting service has been established to cope with the growing demands for interpreters. However, little is known about how this development has influenced interpreting in different contexts. This paper addresses questions concerning the legal protection of deaf people facing the criminal justice system. A central issue of concern is what kind of communicative barriers Deaf people encounter. An empirical study is presented where sixteen strategically recruited informants participated: nine sign language interpreters and seven representatives from the Norwegian criminal justice system. The methodological approach was qualitative, open-ended interviews. The results indicate that Deaf people benefit from the professionalization of the interpreters in many ways. At the same time, as a profession, interpreters have a responsibility for defining their role. It is questionable whether or not interpreters always make professional decisions in deaf people&rsquo;s best interest.</p>

Her doctoral thesis involves user involvement in the allocation of assistive activity technology. Moreover, it addresses how this kind of adaptive technology can contribute to activity and participation in everyday life on the users' own terms. An important field of interest is how different forms of social service organisations are significant for social work practice and service delivery. Professional understanding and user involvement have been key topics for exploration.Sylvia Söderström is a professor in Health Science at NTNU. Her research field is in disability studies with a special focus on children and young people`s everyday lives and on the significance of technology, participation and social inclusion. The methodological approach is mainly qualitative and some central perspectives are interactionism, STS (science, technology and society) and intersectionality.

The assumption that there exist two mutually exclusive conceptions of d/Deafness Á a medical/biological as opposed to a socially constructed one Á is an underlying premise for much of the ongoing bioethical discourse on paediatric cochlear implantation. This text first presents this discourse and then analyses the alleged antinomy. Using the original Kantian conception of antinomies, it is argued that trying to judge which is more 'true', nature or convention, is futile. Against the backdrop of the history of deaf education and recognition of signed languages as fully fledged languages, a three-fold, intertwined approach to d/Deafness is suggested that includes: deafness as physical impairment, Deafness as lingual belonging and deafness as socially constructed disability. Whether or not cochlear implants represent something useful or something harmful to deaf children depends on how the interaction between the different notions of d/Deafness is understood.

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This text presents an overview of the bioethical debate on pediatric cochlear implants and pays particular attention to the analysis of the Deaf critique of implantation. It dismisses the idea that Deaf concerns are primarily about the upholding of Deaf culture and sign language. Instead it is argued that Deaf skepticism about child rehabilitation after cochlear surgery is well founded. Many Deaf people have lived experiences as subjects undergoing rehabilitation. It is not the cochlear technology in itself they view as problematic, but rather the subsequent rehabilitation process. Because they themselves have experienced what they describe as harmful effects which relate above all to the idea of normalization, they have articulated worries for the new generations of deaf children in need of rehabilitation following cochlear implant surgery. These insights have attracted little attention, but could represent relevant ethical questions of which both practitioners and researchers in the field of implantation might be aware.

The UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities was ratified in Norway, June 2013. Nordic countries are generally associated with the promotion of human rights as well as disability rights. The Rule of Law Index from the World Justice Project ranks the Nordic countries among the top nations when it comes to high standards of justice (both civil and criminal justice) and rule of law. However, there are also well-known examples of grave miscarriages of justice in cases where disabled people have been involved. These cases address issues of access to justice and questions barriers to effective communication in criminal justice. Taking the situation of deaf people in Norway as a case, this study asks what barriers deaf people face when reporting a crime, being accused of a crime or being a witness in court. The methodological approach is semi-structured, open-ended interviews with deaf persons, professional sign language interpreters, judges, prosecutors, police officers and lawyers. All the informants have personal experiences from encounters between deaf people and the criminal justice system. This paper discusses this situation in terms of language and communication problems, access to justice, non-discrimination and equal recognition before the law.