During a plenary session on Wednesday 23 November in Strasbourg, the European Parliament voted on a resolution to enable citizens with impaired hearing or those who are deaf or blind to have the same access as their co-citizens to information, particularly by way of sign language interpretation. The latter should have the same status as a spoken language.
Citizens who are deaf or hard of hearing do not currently have any means of direct communication with MEPs or administrative agents at the EU institutions. Equal access to justice is not guaranteed either. The resolution voted on Wednesday 23 November therefore advocates the official recognition of sign languages on the same level as any other spoken language. It also plans is to provide official training at university or equivalent levels to ensure that the European institutions have qualified and professional sign language interpreters. The profession is now expected to be paid accordingly at the same status as interpreters in spoken languages. Nonetheless, a number of practical questions still need to be clarified insofar as there are many different national and regional sign languages in the Union.
There are almost 1 million deaf people in the EU who use sign language and no fewer than 51 million who are hard of hearing, many of whom also use sign language. There are, however, no more than 1500 sign language interpreters. Helga Stevens (ECR, Belgium), speaking at an initiative organised last September, where more than 1000 deaf and hard of hearing citizens met at the Parliament in Brussels to demand an improved status for sign language interpreters, explained, “Concretely, this represents 1 interpreter for 160 users. There is a clear lack of interpreters at the moment and deaf people are losing their place in society”. (Original version in French by Thomas Régnier)