Framing Deaf Children’s Right to Sign Language in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms

Abstract

Sign language rights for deaf children bring a unique perspective to bear in the fields of both disability rights and language planning. This is due to the lack of recognition in existing case law of the right to language in and of itself. Deaf children are frequently deprived of early exposure to a fully accessible language, and as a consequence may develop incomplete knowledge of any language. Thus, in the case of deaf children the concept of sign language rights encompasses rights that are ordinarily viewed as more fundamental to human equality. This paper will take as a starting point the historical treatment of the enumerated disability ground in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms' section 15(1) guarantee of equality rights. We argue that in order to meet deaf children's specific biological and linguistic needs, these children's right to sign language also needs to be recognized as an analogous ground for protection from discrimination. Sign language rights are framed in terms of an immutable characteristic of all children, namely the biolingual process for language acquisition. The biolingual process is the experiential and innate ability to acquire language.

Sign language ideologies and deaf interpreters in Canada

“…This disparity is reflected in the smaller numbers of DIs who are from a younger, child-bearing generation (Bickford et al, 2015) and suggests that a precarious national sign language ecosystem currently exists in Canada. This indicates that in the near future, Canadian governments may face greater difficulty in providing both public services and information in sign language to deaf individuals—rights enshrined in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms (Paul & Snoddon, 2017), the Accessible Canada Act, and the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (Snoddon & Wilkinson, 2021).…”

“…This lack of recognition of deaf people as a cultural and linguistic group is often attributed to their overriding classification as disabled individuals, which is how they are made sense of by nondeaf people who may “confuse our ignorance of life with a physical difference for an account of that life” (McDermott & Varenne, 1995, p. 329). Consequentially, in Canadian law, the sign language rights of deaf people have generally been viewed as the right to a sign language interpreter (Paul & Snoddon, 2017; Snoddon & Wilkinson, 2019), who is often viewed as mediating deaf people’s non-normative language and communication practices (Young et al, 2019).…”

The Use of Visual Aids to Improve Deaf Students’ English Vocabulary: A Literature Review

“…Exposure to visual and sign language, such as American Sign Language (ASL), from infancy onwards helps to boost language development, even for children with low levels of hearing loss. ASL establishes the groundwork for language learning and makes learning other languages easier [24]. The language development of deaf pupils is significantly aided by the use of sign language in the classroom.…”