Embracing Diversity in Deaf Community
On 14-16 October 2016, AIPJ’s Disability Inclusion Officer joined the 5th World Federation of the Deaf Asia Conference in Singapore. With this year’s theme Embracing Diversity in Deaf Community, the conference wants to strengthen friendship with the delegates from various association across Asia. It provided opportunities for the Deaf community to exchange culture and language insights as well as creating awareness and deeper understanding of the deaf communities in Asia.
Participants and speakers from Singapore, Japan, Thailand, Malaysia, Philippines, Vietnam, Hongkong, Russia, USA, and Indonesia talked about various programs which show the development of deaf communities in each of their countries, especially those related to education, interpreting, and communities.
The conference was a good tool to learn and share experience among participants and delegates. AIPJ brought home new ideas and knowledge about the development of deaf world in Asia which has increased very fast and an opportunity to build network with key people, especially Finland based WFD and Australia based World Association of Sign Language Interpreter (WASLI) which are the umbrella organization of the global deaf and sign language organisations. WFD and WASLI acknowledges the development of Indonesia’s Center of Sign Language Service (Pusat Layanan Juru Bahasa Isyarat/PLJ) with support from AIPJ.
“Deaf communities should show more tolerance in the diverse world of the deaf”, said President WFD Colin Allen. “We now see deaf-blind, LGBTQ, and deaf with additional disabilities. It is our challenge to accept thess diversity among us”, he added. He also stated the importance of doing sign language work through documentation and description (i.e. basic research) as the basis in creating accessibility for the deaf:
- advocacy work (legislation and policies, promoting the use of sign language in all sectors, access to interpreter service and information in sign language)
- deaf education (sign language training programs for teachers, planning of education programs and curricula)
- Interpreter training in sign language structure and use
- language awareness training for the Deaf community to build the organizational capacity
