Signs of Access in a Digital World: Online Delivery of Deaf Studies Curricula in Ireland at Third Level,

Irish Sign Language (ISL), an indigenous language of Ireland, is recognized by the European Union as a natural language. It is a language separate from the other languages used in Ireland, including English, Irish, and, in Northern Ireland, British Sign Language. Some 5,000 Deaf people use ISL. Given the history of suppression of signed languages across the EU, the average Deaf person leaves school with a reading age of 8.5 to 9 years. Given this, it is no surprise that Deaf people are the most under-represented of all disadvantaged groups at third level. This poses two challenges: (1) getting Deaf people into third level and (2) presenting education in an accessible form

Creating Access to Education with Progression Pathways via Blended Learning of Deaf Studies at Third Level in Ireland: Open Innovation with Digital Assets

Irish Sign Language (ISL) is an indigenous language of Ireland and is recognized by the EU as a natural language. It is a language separate from the other languages used in Ireland, including Irish, English and, in Northern Ireland, British Sign Language. Some 6,500 Deaf people use ISL on the island of Ireland. Deaf people are the most under-represented of all disadvantaged groups at third level, posing two challenges: (1) getting Deaf people into third level and (2) presenting education in an accessible form. Two higher education institutions, Trinity College Dublin (TCD) and the Institute of Technology, Blanchardstown, Dublin (ITB) have partnered to create a unique elearning environment based on MOODLE as the learning management system, in the delivery of Deaf Studies programmes at TCD. We intend to create access to education plus the provision of progression pathways into and through third level in the Irish National Quality Framework within the European Bologna model. We deliver third level programmes to students online to resolves problems of time, geography and access, maximizing multi-functional uses of digital assets across our programmes. Signed languages are visual-gestural languages and online content is required to be multi-modal in nature and utilize rich-media learning objects. This presents many important challenges, including (1) Universal design in an online curriculum for Deaf students, (2) Assessing signed language interpreting skill in an online context, (3) Using the Signs of Ireland corpus in blended learning contexts in a MOODLE environment and (4) Issues of assessment in an elearning context. In this paper, we introduce the Irish Deaf community and their language; the educational context that leads to disadvantage and negative outcomes in employment and our work to date in developing accessible elearning with progression pathways for Deaf Studies programmes at TCD

Forward: Teanga, 11(Special issue 11), pp. iii-xiii

Welcome to this special issue of TEANGA, which presents a selection of papers on the linguistics and applied linguistics of Irish Sign Language. This publication is timely, coming in the academic year that celebrates the nineteenth anniversary of the establishment of the Centre for Deaf Studies at Trinity College Dublin (est. 2001), and the year in which when Irish Sign Language Act (2017) is due to formally commenc

Towards Blended Learning for Deaf Studies at Third Level in Ireland,

Irish Sign Language (ISL), an indigenous language of Ireland, is recognized by the EU as a natural language. It is a language seperate from the other languages used in Ireland, including English, Irish, and, in Northern Ireland

Deaf leaders’ strategies for working with signed language interpreters:An examination across seven countries

In this paper, we report interview data from 14 Deaf leaders across seven countries (Australia, Belgium, Ireland, the Netherlands, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and the United States) regarding their perspectives on signed language interpreters. Using a semistructured survey questionnaire, seven interpreting researchers interviewed two Deaf leaders each in their home countries. Following transcription of the data, the researchers conducted a thematic analysis of the comments. Four shared themes emerged in the data: (a) variable level of confidence in interpreting direction, (b) criteria for selecting interpreters, (c) judging the competence of interpreters, and (d) strategies for working with interpreters. The results suggest that Deaf leaders share similar, but not identical, perspectives about working with interpreters, despite differing conditions in their respective countries. Compared to prior studies of Deaf leaders’ perspectives of interpreters, these data indicate some positive trends in Deaf leaders’ experience with interpreters; however, results also point to a need for further work in creating an atmosphere of trust, enhancing interpreters’ language fluency, and developing mutual collaboration between Deaf leaders and signed language interpreters

Silent Harm. A review of support for survivors of gender-based violence

Introduction: Embedding principles of Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) in public service provision and education is critical to ensuring that society recognises and values the diverse experiences and perspectives of people at all stages of the life cycle and in different contexts. An active EDI agenda gives consideration to people from minoritised or disadvantaged backgrounds, the potential intersections between different characteristics that might disadvantage them further, and what steps can be taken to mitigate those disadvantages. For example, recognising that minority ethnic women from low socio-economic backgrounds may experience more challenges in access and staying in higher education or employment. Another part of embedding EDI into everyday practice also encourages discussion of traditionally taboo topics concerning gender, such as menstruation and menopause. One such taboo topic is Gender-Based Violence (GBV). Violence against women is a major public and clinical health problem and a violation of women's human rights. It is rooted in and perpetuates gender inequalities. This project focused on women who experience a double disadvantage because they are victims of GBV and they cannot, or struggle to, access support services in the majority language of their country either because they are migrant, refugees or asylum seekers, or because they are deaf signers. This report details the results of a survey conducted as part of the Justisigns 2 project, which was co-funded through the European Commission’s Erasmus+ fund to explore best practices for support service providers and interpreters working together, in order to ensure that women who report GBV can access services and support in their own language. Before going into the findings of the survey study, we provide a definition of Gender-Based Violence and an overview of the Justisigns 2 project, a brief review of relevant literature, details of the methodology used to design, distribute and analyse the survey, and discussion of the implications of the findings with recommendations for training and further research.Comisión Europea - Erasmus+ | Ref. 2019-1-IE01-KA202-05155

Silent Harm. A training manual for service providers and interpreters who work with deaf, refugee, and migrant women and girls who have experienced gender-based violence

Introduction: The handbook presented here is one of the results of the Justisigns2 project, which was developed to address an important interpreter-mediated communications gap, namely: the need to share information about how to communicate effectively, via interpretation, with deaf and migrant women, refugees or asylum-seekers, victims/survivors of gender-based violence (DSGBV) who use languages other than the official languages of their host states. This gave rise to an analysis of need on the part of service providers and the creation of resources to support service providers working with victims/survivors across a range of sectors (e.g.police-court, social-health and NGO settings) and the interpreters who mediate the communicative exchanges with these victims/survivors. The Justisigns2 project was funded by the Erasmus+program (ref. 2019-1-IE01-KA202-051558) and was carried out by the following project partners: Interesource Group (Ireland), European Union of the Deaf, Trinity College Dublin, Dublin Rape Crisis Centre, An Garda Síochána,Heriot-Watt University and the Universidade de Vigo, with support from a number of organisations and individuals (associate partners). This handbook builds on the results of a survey that was conducted in 2021 (Napier et al. 2022) that invited engagement from interpreters and a broad range of service providers working with deaf or migrant DSGBV victims. This yielded extensive and varied data on the needs of such groups in the three countries surveyed (Ireland, Spain and the United Kingdom). For the purposes of this publication, the focus is on violence against women and girls. It is important to acknowledge that DSGBV is violence directed against a person because of that person’s gender or violence that affects persons of a particular gender disproportionately. Given that sociolinguistic contexts and legislative frameworks vary in the different project partner countries, a general definition of DSGBV is first provided and then the differences that exist in the 3 countries surveyed (Ireland, UK and Spain) are discussed. For example, the term gender-based violence is not widely used in the UK where the term Violence against Women and Girls (VAWG) is in use. As a result, the term Domestic, Sexual and Gender-based violence (DSGBV) is used here

Going Against the Current: Educational Policy and Language Rights for the Irish Deaf Community

According to the World Federation of the Deaf, there are an estimated 72 million deaf people in our world today, but only 17% access education. Of these, some 3% have access to bilingual education: that is, an education where the local signed language is a language of the curriculum. This talk considers the impact that lack of access to an education in a signed language has had for members of one particular Deaf community - the Irish Deaf community. (Unintended) outcomes of Irish educational policy have included the evolution of gendered and generational variants of Irish Sign Language, and for many, functional illiteracy in English, limited access to higher education, underemployment, poor access to public services and relative poverty. These are not natural outcomes of being Deaf, but rather outcomes emerging from a societal response that sees “deafness” as a deficit, as "problem", as a medical condition requiring mitigation or cure. Against this rather bleak backdrop we consider how the Irish Deaf community attempts to swim against the tide of policy that impacts negatively on their linguistic position and we ask what the future may hold for Irish Sign Language users