Answer to questions (in written English)

Below are the answers to questions in written English

1. Deaf people identify themselves as a distinct cultural entity, rather than perceiving themselves as part of the disabled community or a linguistic minority, but it is true that many laws now prioritize disability rights and language minority rights, rather than establishing a brand new law specifically for the deaf community. Do you reckon that there are any prevailing legislations related to disability or language minority in your country that can considerably advantage the deaf community at most in the present day? Additionally, I am curious to know if the deaf community is also satisfied with the current arrangement.

Yes, I think so.  We only have to look at the example of Welsh and Gaelic in Wales and Scotland respectively.

I have been involved in a research project with Rachel O’Neill at the University of Edinburgh that compares the approaches to Welsh and Gaelic with that of BSL (Wilks & O’Neill, 2022).  The case of Wales (where I live) is particularly striking because the devolved legislature has imposed a bilingual language policy in Wales, and Welsh and English are seen as equal languages.  All children in schools have to learn Welsh, and there is also Welsh-medium provision available.  The situation in Scotland is a little different: Gaelic and English don’t have equal status, and learning Gaelic in schools is optional, although parents can decide to send their children to Gaelic-medium schools.

So, at least with Welsh, there is a precedent already, which we can emulate in some shape or form for BSL.

Introducing a brand-new law specifically for deaf people is, quite frankly, never going to happen.  We need to work with what we’ve got, i.e. Deaf-disabled and language-minority rights.

Deaf people are not satisfied with the current arrangement.  The best illustration of that is in the British Deaf Association’s new 10-year strategy (2023), which aims to build a #BSL2032 movement to ‘bring about social change to dismantle the barriers.’

References

Wilks, R., & O’Neill, R. (2022). Deaf Education in Scotland and Wales: Attitudes to British Sign Language in deaf education compared to Gaelic and Welsh. https://blogs.ed.ac.uk/deafeducation/wp-content/uploads/sites/5764/2022/10/2-FINAL-REPORT.pdf

2. In your opinion, what key policy changes or reforms could enhance the protection of deaf individuals’ rights within the legal system, based on your findings so far?

I discussed this at a recent talk for the British Deaf Association which you can watch here: https://vimeo.com/812747530 (note, this is in BSL but English captions are provided from the BSL to English translation).  I talk about what we could have now that we have a BSL Act in the UK.  This includes themes such as sign language rights, the preservation of our culture and linguistic identity, reforms to education and lifelong learning, improved access to employment and services, and equal participation in public life.

I also talked about this in terms of the precepts of equality, i.e. formal, substantive and transformative equality.  It is clear from my PhD research that what we need more of for deaf people is transformative equality, so any enhancement in the protection of deaf individuals’ rights needs to be transformative and go some way to transform society’s attitudes towards deaf people.

References

British Deaf Association. (2023). Taking BSL Forward: British Deaf Association’s 10-Year Strategic Vision 2022-2032. https://bda.org.uk/strategic-vision/

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