How did a meeting for disabled people in Uganda end up using sign language that local deaf people couldn’t understand? Julia Modern reflects on how that failure is rooted in racialised ideas about who is an expert – and shares six tips for effective deaf inclusion. (And you can watch a Ugandan Sign Language translation of the blog below.)
In 2018, as part of my research into the lives of deaf and disabled women in Uganda, I attended the annual general meeting of a district-level Disabled People’s Union. Given the strong infrastructure for disability inclusion in Uganda, I was not surprised to see a sign language interpreter, a teacher from a local private school for disabled children, who had been brought in by an international NGO supporting the meeting.
But there was a problem: deaf attendees at the meeting could not understand the interpreter, who was not using Ugandan Sign Language (UgSL). They were left watching, bewildered.
In the era of ‘leave no one behind’ in development, how did this happen? We might think, remembering the viral footage of nonsensical signing at Mandela’s funeral in 2013, that this was a fake interpreter, a fraudster who had lied about their skills. But that wasn’t the case; the real reason was possibly more troubling: systems for organising sign language interpretation are routinely putting workers into interpreting situations they are not competent for, both in Uganda and many other countries.
A system rooted in racialised bias that ignores local expertise
The way the interpreter had been selected could be considered exemplary. Local leaders considered school the teacher taught at to represent the gold standard of inclusion in the town. However, deaf alumni disagreed. Although teachers at the school did use some signing in teaching, they had not been trained in UgSL, instead using a form of signed English that deaf students struggled to understand.
Why did local leaders assume interpreters from the school would be effective, despite deaf people’s complaints? Participants in the research saw racialised bias as a factor.
The school had been founded with the support of British donors and had White volunteers, including some trained special education professionals. It was these connections to Whiteness that deaf participants in my research thought made other people trust the school. One described returning for a visit, only to find his former teachers using an American Sign Language dictionary to find unfamiliar signs – while a Ugandan Sign Language dictionary sat unused in a cupboard. Although all the interpreters in the town were Black Ugandans, racialised concepts of expertise that link Whiteness to competence don’t just apply to people: they can also attach to institutions and systems.
Meanwhile, there were people in the community with more expertise in UgSL interpretation. Often these were deaf people who had become deaf after learning spoken language and could therefore speech read and speak. Or they came from a group of disabled women who worked in the town’s markets and had attended a course run by the Uganda National Association of the Deaf so they could communicate with deaf market workers. These women used UgSL every day and had become highly skilled.
Yet when NGOs or government chose interpreters, they required the guarantee of ‘professionalism’ that came with being employed by the school. They did not check the quality of the interpretation, instead simply relying on the school’s reputation. Many local interpreters were never considered for ‘professional’ assignments, because they were considered part of the ‘community’, though they were sometimes asked to interpret informally and unpaid.
How demands on interpreters make things worse
The setup and expectations of what a professional interpreter should do can make the picture even worse. During the meeting I attended, the interpreter was expected to provide ‘simultaneous interpretation’, as happens in well-resourced places like the UN, translating into sign language instantly. This demands skills only taught to advanced students of sign languages, and interpretation quality degrades after around half an hour without a break. Yet our interpreter had much lower levels of training than required, and was expected to continue for hours without breaks.
Simultaneous interpretation has problems, particularly where interpreters mediate between groups with different power and education. Critics argue it sometimes offers merely an appearance of inclusion, while interpreters privately express concern about whether clients understand much, especially in formal contexts such as court hearings. When simultaneous interpretation is expected to ‘disappear’, producing no impact on the speed and progress of the meeting, it leaves no space to address the specific needs of deaf participants. Using it as the sole route to inclusion, especially where resources were not in place to make it effective, guaranteed problems.
An obstacle to creative thinking and better access
These unspoken assumptions about expertise, race, and what ‘good’ inclusion looks like are unjust and inhibit creative thinking about deaf people’s access. As Maartje de Meulder and Hilde Haualand point out, assuming inclusive practice means simultaneous interpretation crowds out other options, such as providing services directly in sign languages.
To be clear, I am not against investing in professional sign language interpreters in Uganda: deaf Ugandans are calling for this, and it would clearly help, as would better working conditions for existing interpreters. But can we go further, finding better solutions within Ugandan society than those currently accepted in mainstream Western institutions?
The women interpreters from the market used a creative, conversational style of interpreting, incorporating questions to ensure everyone understood. Could this happen in formal meetings too (similar approaches have been adopted elsewhere)? Could deaf interpreters be used? What about appointing deaf people as chairs, which research suggests makes for more effective interpretation?
Deaf people must lead the way in deciding on access
How inclusion happens matters. Development partners must be wary of providing access that looks good to people who don’t use it (often based on racialised assumptions) but is ineffective for those that do. To deliver real inclusion, deaf people themselves must be the decision-makers about how access is provided.
So here are six practical tips for effective deaf inclusion:
- Hire deaf staff who know local sign languages and facilitate other staff to learn local sign languages
- Involve deaf people and deaf people’s organisations in setting up and running access systems
- If interpreters are used, always provide at least two so rest breaks can be provided, and ask deaf people who to appoint to these roles
- Be innovative: consider using deaf interpreters or alternative interpretation styles
- Assume that events involving interpretation will take more time and may need adjusted structures
- Interpreters cannot manage inclusion alone; event leaders need to take responsibility and continually check for comprehension.
Author
Thank you to the interpreter in the video above, Nasser Ssenyondo.
This blog first appeared on From Poverty to Power.