OPEN LETTER TO STANDING COMMITTEE OF PERSONNEL

Greetings from the Association of Sign Language Interpreters!

We are a relatively new organisation working for the promotion of the profession of Sign Language Interpreting and Equal Access for the deaf community of India. Our membership is across the country and the work thought slow thus far has been heartening as many people are coming forward to serve the needs of the deaf people of our country.

The deaf people of India have had no formal accessibility norms until today and it is with regard to this that I am writing to you today.

The 11^th 5 year Plan was a revolutionary document in that, unlike the previous 10 Plans, this one has an entire chapter (attached) devoted to the upliftment of the disabled people of the country. A specific mention was made of many disabilities and particular mention was made with regard to deafness.

A portion of the section reads “The interventions planned shall provide access to information in all its forms. A large number of sign language interpreters need to be developed for hearing impaired people to access health, employment and legal services.” Further “during the Eleventh Plan period a Sign Language Research and Training Centre will be established which will be devoted to the development and promotion of sign language and training of teachers and interpreters”

The deaf community needs these interventions as their basic necessities for a positive dignified life as contributors to society and empowered citizens. There is then a fundamental need to create a new job in the ‘job list’ defining a “Sign Language interpreter” Without this job being in the job list no interpreter will be recruited by the Govt to provide the access needs of the deaf community of India. If there is no career future then no persons will train to become interpreters and the cycle continues.

Sir, as you see we are approaching a crisis. The Finance Minister in his budget speech has already announced the approval of funds for the Sign Language Institute. The institute will not serve its purpose unless there are trainees and no trainees will come if there are no jobs available for them.

Sir, we would like to meet with you on this matter and try to come to an understanding of what can be done. Please do give us an appointment at your convenience where we may discuss this and other matters.

Thanking you,

ASLI ROLLING ALONG!

The ASLI team is now rolling out an evaluation program for the people who are already sign users so they can by pass the tedious process of training in ISL and move directly on to interpreting. The idea is to create a bridge course of 15 day duration to teach specific classes on "interpreting skills". This can be done in each and every nook and cranny of the country and thereby we empower interpreters working for the deaf across the country. The local sign language variation will not be a hindrance and then these local interpreters whoa re working without training or support will be tied in to a national network and recive online training and support from ASLI.

I am rather excited that this way of impacting India is receiving attention finally and the plan that my best friend and I developed 11 years ago is finally off the shelf and in the fray.

Really excited about how this is going to develop. We are getting a team together to develop the course. gonna be good working with linguistic profs and educators and terps all together. wow! also going to put an email group or website group together so we can swop documents and ideas on line.

the vision for indian interpreting!

It sometimes hard for me to grasp that the numbers are so low. And yet the numbers should be so high. given that there are lets say 10 million deaf people in india. lets remove half as being overstated. so 5 million then lets remove 80% as being rural and therefore limited language skills and mostly home sign users. thats 1 million and lets remove 80% as being semi lingual and orally trained and so are unable to speak or to sign. that leaves us 200,000 urban signers. Lets say half of these have not been able to influence any one in their family to sign though they sign themselves. then we have 100,000 deaf people who sign and have siblings who sign. That makes it 100,000 siblings who sign. and taking the last number of 200,000 signers assuming that these many deaf signers get married and have children who sign then we are talking about another 100,000 at least of CODAs. so we should have about 200,000 sign users in the country somewhere.

CAN YOU IMAGINE THAT??? 200,000 INTERPRETERS!!!!

That is what my target for ASLI is. 200,000 members. The number of Indian sign language interpreters whether they are active or not or whether they are formally trained or not, whether they are interested in signing as a profession or not..... they are out there.

All ASLI needs to do is get out there and find them. Just locate them and we are going to be up to our eyebrows in Interpreters and not a moment too soon. There is a whole army of deaf people waiting for services and resources and information and everything.

Can you imagine when we tell the govt they need to have one interpreter per school cuz Sarva Shiksha Abhiyaan, "education for all" cannot function otherwise? Thats 12 lakh Govt schools and about 50 lakh private schools. You are talking some serious numbers at only one per school. if it was two? or three? Its the highest growing profession in the country.

there is a lot to do. that is for sure.