Deaf Caribbean Academic Network: Making language policy work for deaf communities in the Caribbean
Lead Research Organisation:
University of Lancashire
Department Name: Int Inst for Sign Lang and Deaf Studies
Abstract
The Caribbean region is home to many thousands of deaf people who communicate using a signed language, rather than a spoken one. Although people tend to assume that each country has its own sign language, the situation is actually much more compliacted - even one relatively small Caribbean island can have two or three sign languages.
We focus on two problems. The first is to do with the different kinds of sign language used in the Caribbean.
The Caribbean faces many natural disasters, such as hurricanes and volcanoes. Imagine that you are a deaf mother or father, looking after your family. There is an emergency, and everyone around you is making preparations, but you are still trying to find out what is happening. You turn the television on, but the small interpreter in the corner of the screen is signing a language that you do not understand.
Or imagine that you are a deaf child who signs at home - but when you go to school, the teacher does not sign the language that you know. The teacher might speak to you, so that you do not understand what they are saying. Or the teacher might use a different sign language that you also do not understand.
These are some of the serious barriers that deaf people face in the Caribbean. Yet these barriers can be removed if language policies are effective (for example, if the government makes sure that the right information is provided in the right language for each deaf person).
The second problem is that deaf people have struggled to access education, so they often do not have the qualifications that their hearing peers have. There are several deaf people in the Caribbean who are knowledgeable and who conduct research, but they are not able to get a foothold in the academic world.
Our project aims to solve both of these problems. First, we set up a Deaf Caribbean Academic Network (DeafCAN), with deaf people in Trinidad & Tobago, Puerto Rico and Jamaica. They share their knowledge and experiences with each other, and we put them in touch with experts from around the world who can help them to find ways to conduct research together.
Secondly, we collect the experiences of deaf people - for example when trying to access information in the right language - and use these to help the government make better language policy in future.
The work of our DeafCAN Network is expected to have a significant impact on the lives of marginalised deaf people by analysing their perspectives on sign language policy, and we find ways to keep the Network going beyond the life of this project.
We focus on two problems. The first is to do with the different kinds of sign language used in the Caribbean.
The Caribbean faces many natural disasters, such as hurricanes and volcanoes. Imagine that you are a deaf mother or father, looking after your family. There is an emergency, and everyone around you is making preparations, but you are still trying to find out what is happening. You turn the television on, but the small interpreter in the corner of the screen is signing a language that you do not understand.
Or imagine that you are a deaf child who signs at home - but when you go to school, the teacher does not sign the language that you know. The teacher might speak to you, so that you do not understand what they are saying. Or the teacher might use a different sign language that you also do not understand.
These are some of the serious barriers that deaf people face in the Caribbean. Yet these barriers can be removed if language policies are effective (for example, if the government makes sure that the right information is provided in the right language for each deaf person).
The second problem is that deaf people have struggled to access education, so they often do not have the qualifications that their hearing peers have. There are several deaf people in the Caribbean who are knowledgeable and who conduct research, but they are not able to get a foothold in the academic world.
Our project aims to solve both of these problems. First, we set up a Deaf Caribbean Academic Network (DeafCAN), with deaf people in Trinidad & Tobago, Puerto Rico and Jamaica. They share their knowledge and experiences with each other, and we put them in touch with experts from around the world who can help them to find ways to conduct research together.
Secondly, we collect the experiences of deaf people - for example when trying to access information in the right language - and use these to help the government make better language policy in future.
The work of our DeafCAN Network is expected to have a significant impact on the lives of marginalised deaf people by analysing their perspectives on sign language policy, and we find ways to keep the Network going beyond the life of this project.
Organisations
| Description | We used the grant to establish the Deaf Caribbean Academic Network (DeafCAN) with three core members, Andre Witter from Jamaica, Yarett Pineiro-Rodriguez from Puerto Rico (PR) and Ian Dhanoolal from Trinidad and Tobago (T&T). They interviewed deaf people in their respective countries to find out more about the sign languages that deaf people use, and their attitudes to those languages. An important finding that came out of this is that there are commonalities between the language situations and their social consequences across the three main research sites. This had not been carefully looked at prior to our project. Specifically, all three researchers identified undocumented language variation as a key issue with implications for language policy, access, and sign language teaching. We discovered similar relationships between local signing traditions and American Sign Language (ASL), which tends to be used in national sign language interpreting contexts both in PR and T&T. In both contexts, we documented deaf people who found this interpreting hard to understand and therefore ineffective. This has a direct impact on the education and health of deaf people, and on information about natural disasters such as Hurricane Beryl, which struck Jamaica during our project. The project has generated a renewed interest in issues around smaller non-national signing traditions. In Jamaica, Witter said that this project has made him appreciate for the first time the importance of working on Sain, the endangered rural sign language that he used as a child. He has identified another area of Jamaica with a distinct signing tradition that has never been documented. In PR, Pineiro-Rodriguez expressed an interest in the signing tradition of Orocovis, and on researching how this fits into the broader picture of language rights in PR. In T&T, Dhanoolal identified migration as an important, previously undiscussed issue. He documented the experience of a deaf Guyanese migrant in Trinidad, and questioned how deaf migrant rights are addressed. We have reached out to deaf communities around the region and recruited 35 participants from eight Caribbean countries to join five days of training in T&T (December 2024). Many participants identified similar barriers to those we document: lack of access to training and education for would-be deaf researchers, lack of documentation of variation, failures of public policy with respect to access, and the need for resources culturally and linguistically appropriate to local contexts. The scale of our developing Deaf Caribbean Academic Network is unprecedented, and the training was pioneering. We are now nurturing and sustaining this emerging network in such a way that it has a lasting impact. Our last main finding is about disseminating research findings! In our discussions, this issue was raised many times. None of the core DeafCAN members had had access previously to research publications that talked about their own communities and languages, partly because of language barriers, but also because academic publications are not designed for Caribbean deaf community readers. We therefore documented our project work through signed languages, and one of our outputs will be published in International Sign. |
| Exploitation Route | Our findings show the value of deaf people from different Caribbean countries working together to solve the common challenges that they face. Hurricane Beryl hit several Caribbean communities during the course of our project, and our findings will be relevant for Caribbean State parties, regional and international bodies when planning and implementing disaster risk reduction policies in ways that do not exclude deaf and deafblind communities. We found a growing demand for experts in sign languages of the Caribbean to work on sign language teaching, deaf education, interpreting and translation, advocacy, policy development, and teacher training; the passing of sign language recognition legislation and other language policies ensures an increased and long-term need for deaf language professionals working in these areas. Universities in the Caribbean are well-placed to provide accessible opportunities so that deaf people can gain knowledge and skills in the form of recognised qualifications. Those conducting research on or with sign communities across the Caribbean will also need to reconsider how they make their findings accessible to those communities. Finally, the linguistic diversity of deaf communities across the Caribbean has been overlooked, and empowering deaf people to conduct research in their own communities must be a priority. |
| Sectors | Communities and Social Services/Policy Education Environment Healthcare Government Democracy and Justice Culture Heritage Museums and Collections |
| Description | Signing into Law: Preparing Caribbean deaf leaders to work with policymakers |
| Amount | £9,180 (GBP) |
| Organisation | United Kingdom Research and Innovation |
| Department | Research England |
| Sector | Public |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Start | 01/2025 |
| End | 07/2025 |
| Description | International training for 35 Caribbean deaf people and SIGN10 conference |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Other audiences |
| Results and Impact | We provided five days of training at the University of Trinidad and Tobago for 35 deaf people from Belize, Dominica, Grenada, Guyana, Jamaica, Nicaragua, Puerto Rico and Trinidad and Tobago. This took place 3-7 December 2024, before our SIGN10 conference. The training was delivered by a large international team of 10 deaf people and four hearing people from 11 countries (Brazil, Canada, Germany, Italy, Jamaica, New Zealand, Portugal, Puerto Rico, Trinidad and Tobago, UK and US) and covered topics such as sign language teaching skills, sign language policy and planning (including endangered sign languages) and advocacy on early development for deaf children. Project consultant Yarett Pineiro-Rodriguez picked up on trauma expressed by several individuals in sessions on early childhood education, and led a group session on Tools for managing emotional trauma triggers, which we will be following up on. Having a safe environment in which this could be discussed openly at the training was a great start. Most of the trainees stayed on for the SIGN10 conference, held at the University of the West Indies (UWI) St. Augustine Campus, 9-12 December, and SIGN10 was the first academic conference for around 40 deaf people in total. All presentations took place only in International Sign or sign languages of the Caribbean, which was a first for the Caribbean. That sign languages of the Caribbean should be not just the objects of study, but languages of discussion at academic conferences is groundbreaking. Project consultant Andre Witter presented in Sain, a rural sign language of Jamaica, and we believe this was the first ever academic presentation in a rural sign language. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2024 |
| Description | Knowledge exchange event for deaf people in Kingston, Jamaica, and communities across the Caribbean |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | International |
| Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
| Results and Impact | 250 mostly deaf people attended a hybrid event that we organised in Kingston, Jamaica, to communicate information about our Deaf Caribbean Academic Network and our forthcoming SIGN10 Conference in Trinidad (December 2024). The five core members of our research network (Witter, Pineiro Rodriguez, Dhanoolal, Braithwaite and Palfreyman) each presented information in person about our project and about sign languages in the Caribbean. We encouraged people to consider submitting abstracts for the SIGN10 conference, and we have since received 128 abstracts, including from Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago, Barbados, Cuba and Puerto Rico. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2023 |
| Description | Knowledge exchange event for deaf people in San Juan, Puerto Rico |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | Regional |
| Primary Audience | Other audiences |
| Results and Impact | In March 2024, the Deaf Caribbean Academic Network met face-to-face with 30 members of the deaf community in San Juan to share information about our project and our findings so far. We presented on the power of connecting deaf researchers and took questions from the audience, which led to discussion about challenges around sign language policy and planning. We promoted our forthcoming training in Trinidad (December 2024) and five deaf Puerto Ricans joined the five-day training as a result of this engagement activity. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2024 |
| Description | Knowledge exchange event for the British deaf community and its affiliates |
| Form Of Engagement Activity | Participation in an activity, workshop or similar |
| Part Of Official Scheme? | No |
| Geographic Reach | National |
| Primary Audience | Public/other audiences |
| Results and Impact | Deaf project members visiting the host university from the Caribbean gave an online presentation about deaf communities in Jamaica, Trinidad & Tobago and Puerto Rico. (The event was supposed to be face-to-face but moved online because of train strikes.) This event was particularly well attended by members of the Black Deaf community in the UK, who wanted to know more about life in the Caribbean (in some cases because of their own roots in the Caribbean). Since then, the PI has built a relationship with the organisation Black Deaf UK (BDUK), and has obtained a £4,818 QR Enhancing Research Culture grant ("Hand in hand: Working with the UK black deaf community to improve participation in research") to support BDUK and improve its access to research that meet the needs of its members. |
| Year(s) Of Engagement Activity | 2023 |