Today we will be thinking and looking at the campaign messages:
Equal Language and Accessibility
I promised you about the photo of my old-fashioned hearing aid…
In the pictures, you will see there are three different type of hearing aids.. The dark brown one hearing aid was the first one which I wore everyday. The second grey with clip hearing aid was the model of changing to small type from 1980s.. Both of these hearing aids had an ear piece attached to ear mould which can be see in the photo. Finally the latest changing of hearing aid which called ‘over the ear’ and it showed in the photo. It amazed me how the hearing aid change a lot over the period of times. I hated the first two hearing aids because I have to wear like a ‘harness type with a pocket’ to hold the hearing aid everywhere I go. I know some of my D/deaf friends hated those as well. The pictures of children and clothes were used for us to learn at school. These materials were given to me by two teachers for the Deaf children at Kelston Education for the Deaf Centre, Auckland. Because I was doing researching and making into our Deaf History for the community. My project on Deaf History is on hold due to no funding and income for me to continue. Both of the teachers passed away.
Now looking at the topics in Equal Language and Accessibility.
Equal Language – recognises sign language as a valid linguistic means of conveying thoughts, ideas and emotions. it is a fully operating language with its own syntax, morphology and structure. it fulfils all features serve to define the notion of a language. this has been confirmed in many systematic linguistic research on sign language since the late 1970s.
Accessibility – Stresses that deaf people need access to public information and service via sign language, interpreting, subtitling and/or close captioning. A key factor to accessibility to public service such as health care, employment, social welfare or any other government services is provision of and access to sign language.
As a deaf linguist, before I became a deaf linguist and I tried to understand why many D/deaf people signs as their first language, does it have a genuine language like English, French, Italian etc? Are our sign language the same to the rest of the world or not? There was so many answers for me to explore and to research. ….
will continue later..
Life in Eureka 