COMMUNICATIONS CARD

Deaf people in india are often beaten to ensure that they are really deaf. No... its true. this is a common test performed by police men and other authority groups such as random mobs, groups of rambunctious youth on a rampage and so on.

I really dunno how useful it will be in a heated situation but we just developed a communication support card for our deaf members. A simple plastic card to be carried and shown to any one to let them know that you are in fact deaf and are not able to speak and communicate as others do with few tips on talking/communicating with deaf people on the flip side. A plug for the internet video relay service, Signntalk.org and The Association of Sign Language Interpreters is added and you have a neat little card that says most of it.

We are doing pilot test with the group at the National Deaf Youth Conference starting on 25th jan. I will be back with feed back.

Interpreting Conference in February

The ASLI is now having its second conference on a national scale in India in February in Delhi. Its a wonderful opportunity to get senior experts together to discuss INterpreting and Sign Language and deaf access issues. Senior leaders in the field both deaf and hearing have confirmed to attend and by all accounts it should be a wonderful event.

The goal wold be to of course get a lot of publicity thru the deaf community and also in the general media as to the importance of interpreters and the access issues that deaf people face on a daily basis which others don't realise.

Efforts are on even now to get Govt agencies and ministries to participate and gain experience about these critical issues before formulating policies on these matters.

The issue of community interpreting which is by far the most relevant one for a country such as ours wit a population of 10 million deaf persons will be addressed at the conference in detail. I am looking forward to having a number of interpreters who have been working at the grass roots level across the country coming in to share their own experiences and the work that they have been doing. While the presentation will be rather specialised and illuminating in their own way I feel that the ground realities are the indicators by which we will need to chart our future. These will be the most valuable inputs and we hope to capitalise on each attendees experience to guide us.